Thanksgiving's Christian roots

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.

Popular American nostalgia tells us that the first Thanksgiving was held by the Pilgrims  in 1621 after the arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock. Their motivation? They were Christians. 

The 1621 Pilgrim Thanksgiving in Massachusetts was a time of thanks giving to God. Governor William Bradford proclaimed the month of November to be dedicated to "Thanksgiving unto the Lord." Bradford wrote in his diary that their voyage and settlement was motivated by "a great hope for advancing the Kingdom of God."

In 1623, after a severe drought that ended at the conclusion of a colony-wide day of prayer and fasting, Bradford proclaimed another Thanksgiving - the Thanksgiving most Americans picture:

In as much as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetable, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. William Bradford, Ye Governor of Ye Colony.

But there were earlier thanksgivings. One example happened along the James River at present-day Berkley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia.

The year was 1619, twelve years after the establishment of Jamestown, when a group of thirty-eight settlers aboard the ship Margaret arrived after having made a ten-week journey across the Atlantic. Upon their landing, they knelt and prayed on the rich Tidewater soil with their Captain John Woodlief proclaiming:

“Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacion in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Beginning on December 4, 1619, Berkeley Plantation (Charles City, VA), celebrated an annual thanksgiving to God on the anniversary of their safe arrival in the New World. This event was not just an early English Thanksgiving in the New World, it was an event motivated by Christian sentiment.

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.


Celebrations of “thanksgiving” would become a deeply rooted American tradition, usually brought on by periods of great hardship. On December 18, 1777, at the recommendation of Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress, the Thirteen Colonies gave thanksgiving to God for the American victory at Saratoga. The following year Continental Congressional chaplains issued a call to the States to thanksgiving and confession of sin. This Congressional practice continued until 1784.  

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.
  
President George Washington issued the first Presidential proclamation of a National Thanksgiving Day on November 26, 1789, to thank God for the new nation, and a few of his successors followed suit. Interestingly, Thanksgiving was not a specific day or even month, and apparently each presidential proclamation was issued on the whim of whoever was in office. Sporadically between the years 1789 and 1815, days of Thanksgiving were recognized in January, March, April, October, and November. This recognition of Thanksgiving ended in 1815 following President James Madison's term. It would be forty-six years before another American president would issue a Thanksgiving proclamation.


That President was Jefferson Davis, who proclaimed a day of thanks, humiliation, and prayer for the Confederate States of America for October 31st, 1861. Not to be outdone, President Abraham Lincoln resurrected the forgotten day in the United States as well, and issued a similar proclamation in April of 1862. 

In 1863, Thanksgiving was made a national holiday in the United States, and in 1866, the tradition of recognizing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November was started by President Andrew Johnson. 

In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation making fourth Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day. From that time on, every sitting President has recognized Thanksgiving as a national holiday. 

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.

But that isn't the whole history of Christian thanksgivings in America. Let's start back at the beginning and move backward.

 
VIRGINIA: In 1607 when the first permanent English settlement was established in Jamestown, Virginia, Rev. Robert Hunt led the Englishmen in a Eucharist of thanksgiving and praise - consecrating the colony to God.

MAINE: On August 9, 1607, English settlers in Maine under Captain George Popham held a harvest feast and prayer meeting on the Kennebec River with the Abnaki Indians.

FLORIDA: On September 8, 1565, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Spanish explorer, invited the Timucua Indians to dinner in St. Augustine, FL, after a thanksgiving Mass celebrating the explorers' safe arrival.

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.

An earlier Florida Thanksgiving was held in 1564 when French Huguenot colonists celebrated near Jacksonville, FL. Prominent Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, envisioned America as a refuge for persecuted French Protestants. He sponsored a group of Huguenots to found Fort Caroline on Florida's St. John's River. The settlement struggled, but reinforcements came just in time to save it. On June 30, 1564, the group celebrated their first Thanksgiving Festival.

TEXAS: But the first recorded Thanksgiving was May 23, 1541, in the Texas panhandle when Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado held a service of thanksgiving for finding food, water, and pasture for his animals.

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is a Christian holiday.

Sources: Andrew Marra, Fred Taylor, Tim Manning, Jack Marlar, Pierre Bynum.