Most of us will soon gather with friends and family to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast, but where did this tradition originate?
Thanksgiving is Thursday, Nov. 27, and while we celebrate with festive parades and indulging in turkey, sides and desserts, the holiday does not come without controversy. The History Channel points out that many Americans —including people of Native American ancestry — believe Thanksgiving celebrations “mask the true history of oppression and bloodshed that underlies the relationship between European settlers and Native Americans.”
Even more, while most consider the first Thanksgiving to date back to autumn of 1621, some historians point out that the Pilgrims’ celebration was not the first festival of its kind in North America, according to the Smithsonian.
Here’s more about the history of Thanksgiving.
When is Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Thursday in November. This year, Thanksgiving lands on Nov. 27.
When was the first Thanksgiving?
The first Thanksgiving is believed to have been held in the autumn of 1621, when the Plymouth colonists from England and the Native American Wampanoag people shared a harvest feast.
This type of festival was not the first kind, according to the Smithsonian.
“Long before Europeans set foot in the Americas, native peoples sought to ensure a good harvest with dances and rituals such as the Green Corn Dance of the Cherokees,” the Smithsonian writes.
Historians have also recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration, according to the History Channel. In 1565, Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in Florida and on Dec. 4, 1619, more than two dozen British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, and read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
When did Thanksgiving become a holiday?
For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states, but it until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held on the last Thursday in November. Americans have collectively observed the holiday ever since, according to the History Channel.
Natassia Paloma may be reached at npaloma@gannett.com, @NatassiaPaloma on X, natassia_paloma on Instagram, and Natassia Paloma on Facebook. USA TODAY contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: When was the first Thanksgiving? The history behind the holiday
Reporting by Natassia Paloma, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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