Pat Orr
This Thursday, many of us will sit down with family and watch football followed by too much wine and food, followed by an argument about the recent election.
But this year, let’s give Thanksgiving some perspective. American’s are terrible at history unless it happens in front of their face so I always like to give these traditional American holidays a closer examination.
It is clear from archaeological findings that communal gatherings to celebrate a good harvest and give thanks to the Almighty, in whatever form that may take, has existed for several centuries.
More often than not, these celebrations have occurred in the fall to coincide with the end of harvest season. So, as not to get all the Harvard students reading this running off to seek a “safe place,” it must be stated that it is true that white Christian pilgrims did not invent the Thanksgiving feast concept.
In fact, many credit Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Avila as the first European to host a Thanksgiving celebration when he invited all 700 men, women and children who accompanied him on his voyage, along with local native tribes to a meal after landing at what is today St. Augustine Florida in 1565.
Fifty-six years later, in 1623, the roots of the American Thanksgiving were planted in the three-day Jamestown, Virginia feast we all see in historical paintings as a group of happy, well-fed pilgrims surrounded by Native Americans.
Like a lot of traditions, Thanksgiving was often used as a tool to help remind citizens of the sacrifice of others to a growing and emerging America. George Washington was the first president to declare a “day of Thanksgiving dedicated to thanking God Almighty,” literally the day after the Bill of Rights was submitted to the states for ratification. Some thought Washington was trying to calm some fears that were aroused by the “Establishment Clause” in the Bill of Rights which prevents any “government sponsored religion from being created.” Many original colonists and Revolutionary War participants believed the government should be establishing a strict form of Christianity as an official central-core belief system of all American laws and regulations.
The next Thanksgiving proclamation was decreed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Presidents then went silent on the whole subject until after World War II, except for an overreach by Franklin Roosevelt as you will see below.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, college and professional football was booming a fall event. It was only natural then, that a holiday like Thanksgiving became a popular day to hold “the big game.” It wasn’t until the advent of the Macy’s Day Parade in 1926 that Thanksgiving became routinely celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
Parades take planning, so the holiday which seemed to move around until then, was fixed to allow everyone to set the calendars right.
By the late '30s, Thanksgiving was coming to be seen as the advent of the holiday shopping season, and FDR, who was still battling the Great Depression, decided in 1939 and 1940 to move Thanksgiving a week earlier to lengthen the holiday shopping season. There was so much complaining that Roosevelt reversed course and passed a law in 1941 formalizing a national Thanksgiving holiday on the fourth Thursday of November forevermore.
By the 1950s, Thanksgiving had become the official start of the Christmas shopping season. The term Black Friday, referring to the day after Thanksgiving, was such a big day for retail sales that accountants all over the land declared it was the day when businesses “broke into the black,” and a moniker was born.
It would be nice if 2016 America would, or could, remember the real reason for this big dinner, but I don’t hold out much hope. The folks who were afraid of what the Bill of Rights Establishment Clause might mean for this new country would be stunned at how faith and family are generally regarded in the somewhat United States of America today.
Perhaps, for a brief moment before the turkey is carved, there will be that fleeting second of realization during Uncle Fred’s prayer that there is more to be thankful for than the newest app or a chance at Saturday’s lotto, and that everything we have or ever will have is only possible thanks to folks who had the tremendous faith in their God to follow a dream of freedom and self-reliance.
Enjoy your holiday, and let’s hope that all the two-legged Turkeys in America haven’t yet found their own individual safe space in which to wait out this pagan ritual.