The history of Thanksgiving
Holiday teaches unity born from division, reflection from sacrifice
While one of the buzzwords of 2020 may have been “division,” the concept of living through times of deep disunity in the United States is not new.
One need only look to the Civil War and the holiday it inspired to understand that, according to Erin Dwyer, an assistant professor of history at Oakland University.
Today, the last Thursday of November, marks the 157th Thanksgiving for the nation — proclaimed a holiday by President Abraham Lincoln on Oct. 3, 1863.
It’s the parallels between that time and now, drawn at dinner tables and in news talk segments as the political chasm between friends and families grows, that got Dwyer thinking about the origins of Thanksgiving.
“This summer, living through job losses and national division, I couldn’t remember if Thanksgiving originated during the Great Depression or The Civil War. But I remembered it was created during a time of national crisis,” Dwyer said. “I looked it up and
wasn’t surprised to see that it was during the Civil War. What did surprise me when I re-read the proclamation was this idea of unity and bringing a nation together. It brought some things to light for me with the context we have now.”
Dwyer, who earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University in 2012, said there was a certain significance to the holiday being created in 1863. The beginning of that year saw the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation. High casualty battles resulted in some major victories for Union forces. But still, the war dragged on. It would be two more years until what history remembers as the end of the Civil War in the spring of 1865.
“It was the end of a very long year, there were lots of victories, but the war kept going,” Dwyer said of 1863. “Lincoln was saying to the nation with this proclamation that they needed to stop and reflect. The war was a tragic thing, but still, there are things we should be grateful for, even amidst a national crisis.”
That was something that resonated with Dwyer. Her family all live in other states, separated by distance and the coronavirus pandemic. This year, her and her partner had plans to bring their three-yearold child to North Carolina to visit some of them. Instead, they’ll be video chatting today over dinner and running a 5k Turkey Trot in their neighborhood, another holiday pastime that they’d rather be partaking in with family.
“I just kept thinking of this idea — how do we still find gratitude when things are really challenging? That’s why this holiday proclamation was so powerful. What a thing for Lincoln to be saying at a time when there was tragedy everywhere,” Dwyer said. “The death toll of the Civil War was staggering, we had to figure out then as a nation how to mourn and grieve. I think as a society we’ll be doing that again now for years to come.”
Lincoln was in part persuaded to create the holiday by Sarah Josepha Hale, a well-known writer, editor and activist of her time. She spent decades writing letters to government officials in an attempt to convince them to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Eventually, one of those letters made its way into Lincoln’s hands.
The story of the Pilgrim’s feast in the autumn of 1621 that is now ubiquitous with Thanksgiving was added to the lore of the holiday after its creation, according to Dwyer.
In part, that was a purposeful effort by Hale, Lincoln and others to help supersede the true creation story of the United States — Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas located in the Colony of Virginia.
Nearly all of the original Jamestown settlers died, and the ones who didn’t, said Dwyer, resorted to eating shoe leather or cannibalism.
“Jamestown also thrived off of slave-produced tobacco, and Hale, being an abolitionist of sorts, made all of that part of her pitch to the president to make Thanksgiving a holiday based on the Pilgrims. Only 50 percent of them died in their first year here,” Dwyer said.
While Thanksgiving is known now for its abundance of food, jovial dining room tables and football, its origins are much deeper rooted in self-reflection.
Born from a time of pain and growth in the United States, Thanksgiving has evolved and changed like all holidays over time. It’s the lessons of how it came to be, its purpose and message, that Dwyer hopes everyone can take something away from this year.
“All holidays, unless we’re talking about the winter and summer solstices, are constructed. They are historical and cultural constrictions, and we don’t need to be afraid of them evolving over time. We add and adapt new practices through the years,” Dwyer said. “For anyone like me who is having a Zoom Thanksgiving because we don’t want to risk the health of our loved ones, think of it like this: You’re keeping the legacy alive that this holiday is about sacrifice and reflection.”