By MICHAEL BUSHNELL
Northeast News
November 19, 2014

What we celebrate as Thanksgiving is traditionally tied to a three-day feast involving the Pilgrims after their first American harvest in 1621.

The previous winter had claimed many lives from the Plymouth Colony, so the settlers held a fall celebration to give thanks for a “bountiful harvest” that would help them get through the coming dead season. The colonists ate with the Wampanoag Indians, and the menu included wild fowl, venison, seafood, squash and corn.

The Pilgrims held a day of thanksgiving again in 1623. After that, the tradition that started in Plymouth and other New England colonies of setting aside a day to give thanks for the autumn harvest persisted throughout the rest of the 17th century. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress appointed one or more thanksgiving days each year, except for in 1777. In that year, Gen. George Washington declared the holiday in December as a victory celebration for the defeat of the British at Saratoga. Washington later issued proclamations of the Thanksgiving holiday in 1789 and 1795, this time as the president of the newly formed United States of America. However, it was not until another war that officially Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed a national holiday.

Influenced by a seemingly unending stream of letters from Sarah Josepha Hale, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation in October 1863 officially recognizing the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

It should be noted that Hale’s campaign to have Thanksgiving observed as a national holiday lasted over 40 years and consisted of tireless lobbying efforts of her elected representatives and literally thousands of letters sent to presidents dating back to Andrew Jackson. Later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under mounting pressure from the business community, re-designated the holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.