Thanksgiving is an amazing holiday dedicated to spending time with family and friends and giving thanks for everything you have. Thanksgiving goes way back with the native Americans, pilgrims, and many others celebrating this wonderful occasion.
Thanksgiving first started with the Puritans who would observe days of fasting to pray for God’s favor and days of thanksgiving to thank God for a bountiful harvest, victory, and other joyous occasions. Thanksgiving services were conducted in the territory belonging to the US by century by Spaniards and the French in the 16th century. Thanksgiving services were routine in the place that became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607. The pilgrims who settled in Plymouth settled in a land that was almost entirely abandoned after many of the Patuxet died in a disease outbreak. After a harsh winter had killed many of the settlers the last surviving Patuxet, Squanto had learned English and avoided the plague because he had been a slave in Europe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and also served as an interpreter for them until he succumbed to the disease a year later. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit also gave food to the colonists during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient. Massasoit had hoped to establish an alliance between the Wampanoag who had also been greatly weakened by the same plague that killed the Patuxet, and the better-armed English in their long-running rivalry with a Narragansett tribe that had largely been spared from the epidemic. The tribe reasoned that, because the Pilgrims had brought women and children, they had not arrived to wage war against them.
The Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. 17th-century accounts do not identify this as a Thanksgiving observance, it instead followed the harvest. It included 50 people who were on the Mayflower, those who remained of the 100 that had landed, and 90 Native Americans. The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World young daughters, male, and female servants. According to Wampanoag descendants, the harvest was originally set up for the Pilgrims alone, and the surviving natives had heard the celebratory gunfire and fearing war, arrived to see the feast and were warmly welcomed to join the celebration.
The Pilgrims held a real Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 following a fast and a 14-day rain, which resulted in an even larger harvest. In William DeLoss Love’s opinion, this 1623 Thanksgiving was important because the order to recognize the event was from the governor, and not from the church, making it the first civil recognition of Thanksgiving in New England. Melanie Klein, a student here at Saugus says “I love Thanksgiving because I love to spend time with my family, I love how it has been a tradition for so many years.”
To sum up, Thanksgiving is a holiday full of friends, family, and food. This holiday is a fun time to reflect on all your blessings and what you are thankful for. It is important to remember how this tradition started and remember to give thanks.
