Thanksgiving: From Colonial Myth to National Holiday Celebrating Harvest and Family
Thanksgiving, observed on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States, is one of America's most important annual traditions—a holiday that combines religious thankfulness, harvest celebration, familial gathering, and consumer culture into a distinct American ritual. The holiday's origins can be traced back to 1621, when Pilgrims (English religious separatists) who came on the Mayflower in 1620 asked the Wampanoag Native American tribe to join them in a harvest festival. According to popular accounts, the Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims critical survival techniques such as corn planting, hunting, and fishing after the colonists' first winter killed around half of their population. The celebration meal between colonists and indigenous peoples got mythologised as a pivotal American moment, subsequently dubbed the "First Thanksgiving."
However, the historical narrative hides complex facts. The Wampanoag's partnership with English settlers mirrored geopolitical calculations—the indigenous people sought English military backing against other tribes in power struggles prior to colonisation. The connection was transactional rather than cordial, and English settlement proved disastrous for Native Americans due to sickness, relocation, and genocide. The 1621 event could have been one of multiple harvest festivals, rather than a single "first." Furthermore, Thanksgiving customs predate American colonisation: Leiden, Netherlands (where some Pilgrims lived before fleeing) held yearly Thanksgiving ceremonies in the 1570s, and English harvest festivals had medieval antecedents. The Pilgrims most likely imported rather than invented this tradition.
Thanksgiving developed greatly from its colonial origins. Thanksgiving was commemorated regionally until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday, using it as a unifying ritual during the Civil War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt standardised the holiday by moving it one week earlier to extend the Christmas shopping season (a decision that Congress eventually reversed). Today's Thanksgiving has evolved into a secular holiday centred on family gathering and consumption: Americans spend approximately $3.8 billion on Thanksgiving food each year, with turkey (a New World bird) becoming the signature protein, as well as cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin pie becoming commercialised. The post-1950s narrative promotes peaceful cohabitation between colonists and Native Americans, a fiction that is gradually being challenged as Americans recognise colonial history's bloodshed and continued Native American marginalisation. Contemporary Thanksgiving thus represents contradictions between idealised American mythology and historical reality, creating a cultural moment in which national identity, consumer culture, and historical consciousness collide awkwardly. This complex history of survival and displacement is a recurring theme across the continent, echoed in the struggles of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, who continue to fight for land rights and cultural preservation today.
