Times change, but giving thanks still the focus

KENZIE HOWARD
MCHS Student Journalist

Thanksgiving is a tradition to celebrate gratitude, community, and a big meal. Thanksgiving has a special meaning to many people; it is an annual national holiday celebrating the harvest and other significant events in the past year.

In the United States, the holiday is a remembrance of a harvest feast enjoyed between the Wampanoag people and the English colonists in 1621.

Thanksgiving has changed a lot since that first meal, one way being the cooking. The first meal was prepared chiefly by women. Today, the cooking is split a little more evenly, with 84% of men helping with the meal and 42% cooking the turkey.

Modern traditions today consist of some families watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, breaking the wishbone for good luck, sharing what we are thankful for, watching football, and you can not forget the big meal – and the naps!

Early History

The 1621 harvest feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in Plymouth, Mass., is known as the “First Thanksgiving.” It was a three-day celebration of a successful harvest of the Pilgrim’s corn crop. The feast was attended by at least 90 Wampanoag people and 52 English people, including Gov. William Bradford.

Their feast included many dishes, some of what we eat today and some food we have never had on Thanksgiving. These dishes include venison, duck, geese, fish, shellfish, cod, sea bass, mussels, lobster, eel, beans, squashes, pumpkins, Native sobaheg (stew), boiled bread, and Nasaump (corn porridge).

The celebration also included ball games, singing, and dancing (not much different from ours). The Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and vegetables, cook, hunt, and fish. The Pilgrims were wary of the new land and its creatures and were afraid to eat many things that grew on it. This is how this event, Thanksgiving, got started. It has been an annual tradition to this day.

Becoming a National Holiday

Sarah Josepha Hale was a writer, editor, and abolitionist who significantly turned Thanksgiving into a national holiday. In 1863, Hale wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln asking him to establish a National Day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November.

Several years after Lincoln’s Proclamation, Congress passed legislation making Thanksgiving a national holiday. In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill into law.

Modern Thanksgiving

Modern traditions consist of Thanksgiving centered around turkey and spending time with family. As mentioned, Macy’s parade is an annual tradition watched before lunch on Thanksgiving Day. Marched down the streets to the excitement of children and adults, the parade has been held in New York since 1924.

Another thing many people enjoy doing on Thanksgiving is watching football. The universally abhorred Dallas Cowboys started playing on Thanksgiving in 1966 as a publicity stunt, describing themselves as “America’s Team” playing on an American holiday.

Thanksgiving continues to change with diverse cultural influences, with different immigrant communities bringing their dishes and customs into the celebration. People have various ways of celebrating this holiday, but gathering with family and talking about what you are grateful for is such a special day.

Thanksgiving in Lynchburg

Here in Lynchburg, Christmas decorations on the Square are already up, but Thanksgiving has not been forgotten.

One of the biggest things we do in Lynchburg is give back to the community. Moore County High School does this by gathering Thanksgiving baskets to give to needy families. And there are many stories like this in Lynchburg about people giving back because nothing is more important than spending time with your neighbors and celebrating a gratitude-filled day.