The Origins of Thanksgiving

Here is one of the many problems I have with public schools. Everything has to be “dumbed down” to fit into a nice politically correct mold.

I was taught in school that the Pilgrims “founded” Thanksgiving as a celebration of the harvest and their good fortune in the New World. In reality, Thanksgiving was not a yearly occurrence until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday - and it had little to do with the Pilgrims’ harvest celebration, but everything to do with being grateful to God. Before Lincoln, several Presidents called for a day of Thanksgiving along the lines of Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation, excerpted below:

“Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.”

As with many holidays, the secular meaning has taken over and I’m not against that, but I want my children to understand the true origins of the holiday (as well as the reality of what the “settlers” of this country did to the Native Americans - but that’s a whole ‘nother story!) instead of dressing up like pilgrims and Indians for a school play that perpetuates a myth.