It’s that time of year again; time for our annual post on the first Thanksgiving. We’re re-running last year’s edition, with slight updates.
In November 2024, we were staggering under the weight of the presidential election. In November 2025, it’s much, much worse. But the message we sent then is the one we send now, and we believe in it. The long, slow fight to turn this tyrannical tide has begun; for that, we can give thanks this year.
This isn’t the post we thought would be offering for our first post after the presidential election. But it is, for two reasons.
First, it’s okay not to know exactly what to do now, beyond what we have always recommended—taking positive action through our democratic system to continue the fight for liberty and justice for all in this country. We have no special insights into how to do this now, when nominees for federal cabinet positions and departmental leadership are being assembled to put longstanding plans to destroy that system into action. American history does not offer us a parallel situation to draw wisdom from. This attack is brand-new in its horrors. We’ll be figuring out what to do with all of you in the months that come.
For as much as things seem surprisingly normal right now, we know this is the equivalent of the “phony war”—the period between September 1, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland to being WWII and May 1940, when they invaded France. During that eight-month period, there were no major battles between the Axis and the Allies in Europe, only some small strikes and maneuvers. (Of course, the war was furious in Asia and North Africa during this time.) People in Britain, France, and the U.S. began to wonder if a continent-wide war had really begun at all.
They found out soon enough that it had. And that day will come to us here, on January 20, 2025. In the meantime, we gather our resources, get our heads together, and prepare.
Second, the type of myth-busting history this post represents is precisely the real historical work that the next Trump administration is dedicating to stamping out. An objective description of the people involved in a historical event, including their political, social, religious, and personal identities, that doesn’t seek to build anyone up or tear anyone down but lets those people’s actions do one or the other. We’re going to keep doing this no matter what. This version of the post includes the updates we made last Fall in our “housekeeping” update so that the inaccurate text is now removed.
So let’s get into our annual tradition of posting about “The First Thanksgiving”, and know that we’ll be keeping on through this uncertain and fearful period together.
This is the time of year when, in the course of thinking about and celebrating Thanksgiving, people take a moment to wonder about this event. What was it? why did it include Indigenous people? what did it mean to the Pilgrims?
The answers are rooted in the “gotcha” fact that the Pilgrims never celebrated “the first Thanksgiving”. They celebrated “a thanksgiving”, definitely in lower-case letters, one of many thanksgivings they would observe whenever they felt God had blessed them. When they observed a thanksgiving in 1621, they had no idea whatsoever of it becoming an annual tradition or holiday.
President Lincoln actually instituted this holiday during the Civil War to unite the U.S. in thanks for its blessings even in the midst of that terrible war. Here’s how he put it:
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
—Britain and France have refused, in the end, to support the Confederacy, the U.S. itself is still intact and strong, and the U.S. Army and Navy are driving back the enemy.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
—The U.S. economy has not fallen apart for lack of cotton produced by the labor and suffering of enslaved Americans, as the South had always predicted it would. Industry and agriculture are stronger than ever and the U.S. continues to expand.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
—God has punished the U.S. with this war for the sin of slavery, but is showing encouraging signs of his support for the U.S. war effort.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
—While thanking God for his mercies to the U.S. so far, Americans should also offer up prayers asking for his care for all those who have lost someone in the war, and asking for his help in ending the war as quickly as possible.
So the First Thanksgiving in the U.S. was held in November 1863 and, insofar as it was meant to celebrate victories in a war to end slavery, it represented a good cause. Why, given this, are we taught that the First Thanksgiving happened in 1621? Let’s go back to that year and trace the progress of this mistaken idea from then to now.
The Pilgrims had landed in lands the Wampanoags belonged to and cared for that are now called Cape Cod in the state of Massachusetts the previous November—a terrible time to try to establish a settlement. Their provisions were low, and it was too late to plant anything. It is another myth that they landed so late because they got lost. They had intended to land south of Long Island, New York and settle in what is now New Jersey, where it was warmer, but their ship was almost destroyed in a dangerous reef area just south of Cape Cod, and the captain turned back. They then had to crawl the ship down the Cape, looking for a suitable place to land. Long story short, they ended up in what is now Plimoth.
Most Americans know how so many of those first settlers died from starvation and disease over the winter, and how it was only by raiding Wampanoag food caches–and sometimes their graves–that the colony survived at all. (See our post “Saints and Strangers: myths and misunderstandings” for more on this crime.) By the Spring, there were not many colonizers left to plant, but they dragged themselves out to do so. Without help from the Wampanoags, who showed them planting techniques—potentially just to keep the Pilgrims from raiding their winter stores again—they would not have survived. By November 1621, a very good harvest was in, and Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims often had days of thanksgiving. In times of trouble, they had fasts, which were sacrifices given for God’s help. In celebration times, they had thanksgivings to thank God for helping them. So thanksgivings were a common part of Pilgrim life, and calling for a thanksgiving to praise God for the harvest would not have been unusual, and would have been a day spent largely in church and at prayer.
Here is the only—yes, the one and only—eyewitness description of what happened next:
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
That’s Edward Winslow, writing about the thanksgiving in his journal of Pilgrim life called “Mourt’s Relation”, published in 1622. We see that the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and 90 of his men arrived at some point, having heard about the feast, and the Pilgrims hosted them for three days, and had some rather traditional Anglican sport firing their guns. A one-day thanksgiving turned into three days of feasting and games.
Edward does not explain why the Wampanoags “came amongst them”. It’s possible a messenger was sent to the sachem Massasoit to inform him of the “entertainment” (as English people of this time called an event) for diplomatic reasons. Certainly the Wampanoags had a right to feel they could join in, since it was their help that had led to the good harvest. We don’t know if the English were surprised when so many Wampanoag men arrived, or if they expected it, since after a year the English were more familiar with the Indigenous practice of regularly visiting them, in informal ways, to help establish kinship ties between the groups. The Wampanoag contribution of five deer to the observance was substantial, turning it into a less religious, more secular “feasting” celebration.
The fact that this thanksgiving was shared between Wampanoags and English makes it almost unbearably poignant. The Pilgrims were colonizers, and with a very few, isolated exceptions they would not be turned from their desire to occupy the land and remove the Wampanoags. Feeling compassion for their suffering that first year is natural, but it displaces compassion for the Indigenous people who helped them when they could have destroyed them, and in return were systematically displaced from the land they belonged to and subjected to a determined attempt to eradicate them, by death or being driven away, that continues to this day in the U.S. We wrack our minds, as the English then would have said, trying to understand this destructive mindset that remains so entrenched in humans around the globe.
People today generally assume there was another thanksgiving the next year. But as religious Separatists, the Pilgrims only held a thanksgiving for the first good harvest because it was a life-saving change from the previous Fall. Once they were on their feet, they expected good harvests, and didn’t have to celebrate them. It was also against their religious beliefs to celebrate annual holidays—like the Puritans, they did not celebrate any holidays, not even Christmas. Holidays were a human invention that made some days better than others when God had made all days equally holy. So to hold a regular, annual harvest thanksgiving was not their way. When things were going well, Separatists and Puritans had days of thanksgiving. When things were going badly, they had days of fasting. None of them were annual holidays .
The hype to locate the modern Thanksgiving holiday in the Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving only began after 1863, when historians noted the tradition of impromptu thanksgivings in the 1600s and made an unwarranted and improper connection to the new holiday to make it seem less new and more traditionally American. Before then, the Pilgrims’ many days of thanksgiving and fasting were completely forgotten. As we saw above in Lincoln’s statement, the Pilgrims certainly weren’t the inspiration for the holiday we celebrate today—they were retroactively brought into that in the worst, most ironic way: after the Civil War, southerners resented Thanksgiving as a “Union” holiday celebrating U.S. victories in the war and so the focus was changed from fighting slavery to the Pilgrims… who had supported slavery.
If only that first thanksgiving–an impromptu, bi-cultural celebration–had set the tone for the rest of the interactions between the English colonizers and the Indigenous peoples of North America. This year, spend Thanksgiving however you like, and share the truth about where the holiday really comes from—the depths of a terrible war fought for the greatest of causes. Let Thanksgiving inspire you to stand up for the founding principles of this nation and re-commit to upholding them in your own daily life of good times and bad. And if possible, look into joining in any local protest against colonization and the destruction of people, lands, and living things that takes place in your area on Thanksgiving. Join with Indigenous people if you can to acknowledge that upholding the principles of liberty and justice for all can’t begin without a 180 move away from the values of colonization.
None of this constitutes “hating America”. Indeed, it actually moves us closer to recovering the America that could have been had colonization been overruled by kinship.
The Historic Present 