Thanksgiving and how it has Evolved
Through doing research on the history of Thanksgiving, I learned interesting information that I hadn’t known before about the very first Thanksgiving and how it has evolved. The first Thanksgiving wa3-day day celebration of a successful harvest in 1621. Although there were Native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe in attendance it is not for certain that they were necessarily invited as we imagine it now. One of the most interesting things I learned was that a large majority of the foods we associate with Thanksgiving now, were not present at the first Thanksgiving. For example, pumpkin pie is a Thanksgiving tradition for most families and is largely associated with the holiday, but pumpkin pie was not a part of the first Thanksgiving because they didn’t have the dough or ovens to make it! Historians aren’t even sure if turkey was apart of the first Thanksgiving. Through this research, I learned a lot more about the first Thanksgiving and how it actually happened. However, what i found most interesting was how it evolved into a national holiday.
Thanksgiving wasn’t always a national holiday, despite what we may think because of the fact we associate the first celebration of it in 1621. Although there may have been days that people dedicated to giving thanks,Thanksgiving wasn’t actually established into a national holiday until about 1854. Sarah Josepha Hale was a large contributor to the evolution of Thanksgiving from a celebration to a national holiday. In 1830 after publishing a novel about her family and how they celebrated what later became known as “Thanksgiving” she was hired to a leading position in the American Ladies Magazine. She used this platform not only to promote women’s issues but also to mail a letter to the president at the time, Abraham Lincoln. She wrote about the significance of the holiday and how it should be celebrated. While the president himself as well as others had tried to establish a national holiday revolving around giving thanks, these days were also largely associated with war because they typically marked victories of battles between the north and the south. Sometime after receiving Sarah’s letter, William Seward wrote a proclamation to declare the fourth Thursday of every November, Thanksgiving. President Lincoln signed and the proclamation passed. The government hoped this new holiday would help to “heal the wounds of the nation”. This was most interesting to me because I had always assumed that since the pilgrims Thanksgiving had been celebrated at the same time every year, but it wasn’t actually established until much later.
The part that I found most interesting about all of this is how we now have this almost stereotypical view of how the first Thanksgiving happened. We often think of pilgrims and Indians hand in hand around a large table giving thanks for the wonderful feast of turkey, corn, pie, and whatever other foods we think of when we hear Thanksgiving. However, I learned that this is not necessarily how it happened. Thanksgiving has evolved to fit this stereotypical celebration that we imagine happened at the first feast, and I find it interesting that what we often imagine isn’t what actually happened. I feel like when we as a modern society imagine past events to the best of our abilities, our conception of them often become a little misconstrued because we tend to only think of the most stereotypical version. While doing this can give a simpler, easier to understand version of history, it also causes us to lose some of the value of the events and what actually happened. I found the information that I learned about the first Thanksgiving very interesting because it cancelled out many of the false notions I had about the way it happened. For example, I found it interesting that it is believed that the number of Indians in attendance almost doubled that of the pilgrims. I was also very surprised when I learned that many of the foods that I associate with Thanksgiving, like turkey, weren’t actually apart of the first Thanksgiving meal. I think it is important for us to dive deeper and to learn more about past events to help create a better understanding so we can push past the stereotypical versions, and truly understand past events.
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