Before there was Thanksgiving, there were Thanksgivings—one-off days of Christian observance, potentially falling any time of year, when good fortune compelled communities to give thanks to God. The feast most of us believe originated the tradition, between Native Americans and Pilgrims in 1621, wasn’t even the first Thanksgiving celebration in the colonies, let alone the New World. In fact, its participants didn’t consider it a Thanksgiving at all.
In 1863, when President Lincoln proclaimed a national end-of-November Thanksgiving following a long drought of federally endorsed Thanksgivings, he was still employing the pre-modern notion of the holiday—as a momentary spiritual expression of gratitude. He invited America to celebrate “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” and the failure of civil war to “[arrest] the plough, the shuttle or the ship,” among other reasons. But he made no mention of that meal near Plymouth Rock.
Lincoln’s proclamation led to the holiday being annually re-proclaimed by every successive president—each of whom surely saw the political benefits of declaring a day of rest while praising the nation’s progress under his tenure—until 1941. That’s when Congress passed, and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, a law establishing the holiday into perpetuity.
By then, Thanksgiving had already been transformed. Football had long since attached itself, with some historians tracing the association to a series of Yale-Princeton matchups begun in 1876. But more importantly, its connection to family-gathering had now developed. Mass transportation and urbanization had flung many families apart, digging out moats Thanksgiving could bridge. Meanwhile, the holiday’s modern secular bent had been secured by its quietly patriotic appeal to people of all cultures and beliefs, who adopted Thanksgiving as an American holiday, not a religious one.
So feel free to feel free today. From its origin to its evolution and even, in a way, to the mythologizing that surrounds it, history shows Thanksgiving has never been about history. It’s always been about the moment.
Enjoy it—
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image features seagulls having a moment along the Quinnipiac. This updated essay was originally published on Thanksgiving 2015.
