After Plymouth Colony how did our Thanksgiving celebration evolve?
Since that very first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621 Americans have spread out across the continent expanding their ranks with immigrants from every corner of the globe. How did historical trends affect the holiday menu? What events shaped the holiday that we celebrate so enthusiastically now on the fourth Thursday of November?
>>> Early days in the USA <<<
During the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving each year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States. He called upon Americans then to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.
In the early days of the new democracy many of our Founding Fathers — Benjamin Franklin in particular — had high regard for the wild turkey as a true American icon, even for a time favoring it over the eagle to be named as our national bird. Alexander Hamilton actually proclaimed that no “Citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day.” As Thanksgiving fare, though, the big bird was uncommon until after 1800. It wasn’t until 1857 that turkey seems to have become part of the traditional dinner in many parts of New England.
>>> After 1800 <<<
By the mid-19th century Edward Winslow’s letter and Governor Bradford’s manuscript describing the Plymouth Colony celebration had been rediscovered; both were subsequently published and widely distributed. Boston clergyman Alexander Young later printed Winslow’s letter in his Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, and in the footnotes there he somewhat arbitrarily declared that feast at Plymouth Colony as the first Thanksgiving.
Later on enough nostalgia developed for colonial times so that by the 1850s, most states and territories were celebrating Thanksgiving locally. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of a popular women’s magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, was a leading voice in establishing Thanksgiving as an annual national event. Beginning in 1827 Hale petitioned at least 13 presidents, the last of whom was Abraham Lincoln, to extend federal status to the Thanksgiving holiday. She finally pitched her idea to President Lincoln as a way to unite the country after the devastation suffered during the Civil War. In 1863 Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Ms. Hale apparently was also a real trendsetter for running a household in her day (think: a kind of Martha Stewart for the mid-1850s and also, incidentally, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). Throughout her campaign Hale printed Thanksgiving recipes and menus in Godey’s Lady’s Book. She also published close to a dozen free-standing cookbooks. “She is really planting this idea in the heads of lots of women that this is something they should want to do,” says Kathleen Wall, the culinarian at Plimoth Plantation. “So when there finally is a national day of Thanksgiving, there is a whole body of women who are ready for it, who know what to do because she told them. A lot of the foods that we think of—roast turkey with sage dressing, creamed onions, mashed turnips, even some of the mashed potato dishes, which were kind of exotic then—are there,” she reports.
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In ensuing years, as technology and transportation improved, food choices expanded. In the next PUT THE “THANKS” BACK INTO THANKSGIVING we will look at some of the trends and developments that have led to Turkey Day 2015 and the options for celebrating the bounty in our lives today.