Origins of the American Thanksgiving Holiday || An RTTB Brief History

The United States celebrates an annual Thanksgiving holiday.  Today Thanksgiving means football, feasting, family, days off from work, and early Christmas sales in the stores. But what are the origins of this Thanksgiving holiday? 

• Who were the Pilgrims who started it and what were their religious beliefs?
• What did George Washington and Abraham Lincoln say about Thanksgiving?
• Were the founding fathers religious or not? 

In this session we review all these questions and give an historical and religious context to the holiday. 

Chapters

• 0:15 Origins of Thanksgiving and Pilgrims
• 15:49 Thanksgiving
• 31:50 Thanksgiving, Reverence, and Appreciation

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:15

Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. Today we're going to do a special topic on Thanksgiving. In the United States it's a holiday Thanksgiving holiday so we thought we would do a little bit on what is that, how did it come about, and a little bit on the people that originally started it, and then some things on how it got to be what it is today.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Not to disappoint too many people, but the actual Thanksgiving is to be thankful for God and what God had provided it wasn't to be thankful for football and family and the various things that sometimes people will take it to be. But yes, it was originally there to thank God for the provisions and providence that he had provided to our country.

Speaker 2: 0:57

I was at one point in a foreign country and it was working through an interpreter and one of the things I was doing when I was there was teaching English, and of course I wasn't teaching much, I was just the English speaker in the room that would say some things and then the English teacher would kind of help them interpret, because you come from an American standpoint, you just phrase things. So when it got to be a Q&A time, there were some believers there and they asked me about Thanksgiving, because there were nonbelievers there and that would give me an excuse to talk about giving thanks to God, and that's really what the holiday was originally for. What I wanted to do was to go back a little bit to the original Thanksgiving and what that was, and to tell that story. You have to have a little bit of who the pilgrims were before the United States was even a country. The original ones that were attributed to the holiday of Thanksgiving came in 1620. They were Englishmen. Who were these pilgrims? What did they believe? What were they trying to do?

Speaker 2: 2:01

A little bit of church history. First. There was a Reformation, what's called the Reformation in the 1500s, where the Protestants the Protestants, if you will broke off from the Roman Catholic Church. The historians always give it the initial date of 1517. On October 31st 1517, martin Luther nailed 95 debate topics to a door in Wittenberg, germany, and that was like the public bulletin board and the original ones. Luther wasn't trying to start a controversy. They couldn't tell that because the original ones were posted in Latin and that just meant the academics wanted to have a conversation about these things.

Speaker 1: 2:44

His original intent wasn't to break away from the Roman Catholic Church altogether. That was an original thing.

Speaker 2: 2:50

And some of the younger seminary students that knew Latin realized the significance of what he was trying to do, translated it into German and within two weeks it was spread everywhere and this controversy started. So time goes on and through Martin Luther and other people in that era of the 1500s John Calvin was one, there were others, zwingli, and there was a series of these people that broke off from the Roman Catholic Church and essentially formed Protestantism. As part of that movement in England, henry VIII was the king of England and wanted an excuse to divorce. Some of his wives Couldn't get a legitimate divorce through the Catholic Church, so he said I'll form my own church. But as now, the Anglican Church was originally formed by Henry VIII and he made himself the head of the church and formed a quote-unquote Protestant version of the church in England, based underneath the king, and he could get his divorce.

Speaker 1: 3:52

And in the US the Episcopal Church is the Anglican Church. It's the American version of the Anglican Church.

Speaker 2: 3:59

You know when the Episcopals renamed themselves. I do not. During the American Revolution after 1776, the Anglican Church had to give official, at least formal, obedience to the king of England. And if you were in revolution against the king of England, we can't give obeisance to the kings. So they just renamed themselves. But today the Anglican Church, and at least the Episcopal Church in the United States, are under what's called the Anglican Fellowship and the Anglican Communion, if you will. So there are some American Episcopalians that align themselves under Anglican bishops.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Anyways, protestant Reformation happens in 1500s. Henry VIII in England forms the Anglican Church, and then there were some believers, some Christians in England that wanted to separate from the Anglican Church and reform it even further. They became known as separatists. And I guess even one step back before the separatists there were the Puritans and the Puritans. They didn't want to separate from the Anglican Church, but what they wanted to do was what they called Purify it, hence the name Puritans. The Puritans were Anglican but they thought that the Anglican Church didn't remove themselves far enough from the Roman Catholic Church. The Puritans wanted to purify or remove some of the vestiges of Roman Catholicism from the Anglican Church. Roman Catholic Church has seven sacraments there's baptism and marriage and communion or Eucharist last rites.

Speaker 2: 5:46

There's seven of them and in the official Catholic doctrine God's grace is meted out through doing these sacraments. The Puritans wanted to purify that. They didn't believe in the seven sacraments, they just wanted to keep communion or the Eucharist and baptism and get rid of the others as a means of God giving people grace. So they wanted to purify those things out of the Anglican church. We won't go into all the details here, but if you look at the kings and queens of England Elizabeth I there was a Mary that was called Bloody Mary and Henry VIII they vowed back and forth for several decades on which church they were going to follow and they caused many wars.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Caused some wars.

Speaker 2: 6:36

There was a civil war in England at the time. There was a certain amount of upheaval around religiosity. So by the time it got around to the king that was in place during the 1600s, they viewed everybody in England as one church and they didn't really want to give any quarter to people that wanted to change their religion. So they actually prevented people from worshiping a different way and they prevented people from starting a different church, even prevented people. The original pilgrims ended up having to escape England to go to Amsterdam so that they could worship the way they wanted.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Now, this king was this James I, because I know that he was in the 60., because he commissioned the first King James Bible. That's where it comes from 1611.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So I think it was James I. Okay, I'd have to go back and check, but I believe it was James. I Get the picture In England and this was true in many countries, not just England.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Right.

Speaker 2: 7:42

The religion of the country was viewed as a country's religion, and if you were that denomination or that religion, it's because you were a citizen of that country. The citizenship and the religion that you were under were one and the same.

Speaker 1: 7:58

And even the king, especially the English kings, even today, in fact, they are known as the defenders of the faith. Yes, so it's part of the makeup, official makeup of the actual royalty.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Because they viewed the religion and the national citizenship as one. Then whenever somebody wanted to change the religion, it was like treason, you're going against the country. They didn't have a concept that there could be many different churches in one country. If you were English, you were Anglican. If you're a different country, you were a different religion. When some of the Puritans wanted to purify the church in England and the Anglican church wasn't having any of it, they tried to escape and they did. They got caught a couple of times. Some of them got thrown into prison for trying to just move to Amsterdam to do religion. But some of them did. They escaped.

Speaker 2: 8:54

England started this Puritan church in Amsterdam. Of course these were Englishmen in a Dutch country and in their view the culture was just different and they didn't really fit. It wasn't English From the Puritans. There was another group, separatists, and the separatists wanted to. We're not here to try to purify the Anglican church. We're giving up on it entirely. We're going to form another church, we're going to separate. So the original Puritans were just trying to change Anglicanism. The separatists said we're going to go start another church in Thailand. The separatists then said in order to do this, well, we want to get out from under this Dutch culture and form our own. They were the original pilgrims. There was about a hundred of them that left on the Mayflower and came to the United States. That was really a hard journey. If you've ever seen any pictures of the North Sea, the North Atlantic, that's a really violent sea.

Speaker 1: 9:54

I've seen a replication of some of the ships of that era and it's really kind of surprising. They're not that large. But today's standards are small. No, and you're thinking, however, many dozens of people that are on there, mainly in the hold of the ship, most of the time because of the conditions of the sea, not everybody could go up on deck, and I think the journey don't know for sure the journey was something like two to three weeks, wasn't it something like that?

Speaker 2: 10:21

It was pretty long, weeks at a minimum it might have been a couple of months. I can't remember the length of the voyage, but I do know, the North Sea is quite violent and these were, by today's standards, relatively small ships and being on that for days and weeks with large amounts of sea sickness and it was very hard on these people.

Speaker 1: 10:40

So they landed at Plymouth.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Well, here's the other little thing. What they didn't realize, of course, these people were generally accustomed to the climate in southern England and what they didn't realize was that the reason why southern England is relatively warm is because of the Gulf Stream and the ocean currents, and there's relatively relatively warm air that blows in and keeps England foggy and relatively warm On the globe. They thought, okay, we can go over about the same longitude, we'll be able to have about the same climate. Well, they didn't realize that once you get out of that Gulf Stream it's cold. They ended up with a couple of problems. One they thought they could go over to Virginia and have a similar climate Well, it's just colder. Then they missed it, they misnavigated and ended up more north. It was Plymouth's up near.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Boston, so it's up close to Massachusetts and it just so happens that particular winter was quite cold. So they were very unprepared for the winter and they landed in. I believe it was December. It was the middle of the winter when they landed. So we had these people not accustomed to the climate just spent weeks, maybe a month or two, on a horrible sea. A lot of them had pneumonia. They were weak from the voyage, possibly scurvy, because they just didn't have good food. There was a hundred of them. By the next summer half of them had died from either the hardships of being there. It was again in New England, in the middle of a bad winter, didn't have the clothes, didn't have any housing, didn't have any way. They just basically dug holes in the ground and did the best they could. I think the account I read by the next summer they had seven buildings built. By the next summer.

Speaker 1: 12:35

And this is just the fledgling of what's now the United States and even the fledgling of the colonies. This was in 1620 and, of course, columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. So while they had been navigating the area for roughly a hundred years or so, there hadn't been a lot of push in regards to setting up. So you're right, when they came in, there wasn't an established city there or an established colony there or anything. They were there on their own, and these are families. So this isn't like a forward group of men that came in, set everything up. They brought their families and everybody with them.

Speaker 2: 13:15

These were families that were coming to settle With that. It was quite hard, quite difficult. There's one account I forget the gentleman's name that lived through that year and wrote a letter back to England describing what happened to their year and what they were like. So that basically all we know about this one group of initial pilgrims was because of this one man who wrote this letter, and what he describes is what they had to do to survive that winter and what they had to do to survive the next summer. It turns out they were quite friendly with the Indians.

Speaker 2: 13:51

The Indians were quite friendly. They worked together quite well. The Indians would bring them deer and they would take their firearms and go shoot birds, pheasants and things like that and trade a good bit. There are stories of them going 50 miles inland in some cases. With the Indians they were quite friendly. The pilgrims were actually not the very first. By the time they got there there had been some trappers and fishermen that had come but they weren't really colonizing. Some of the Indians had actually learned English by this time. So there had been again fishermen and trappers and people like that. There were shipping back beaver pelts and things like that, but there was trade already going on. It's just there wasn't an established colony that was really trying to. We're going to go here and live.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Now because of how hard it was. Of course, they planted crops in X-spring. And here's one thing, steve were you ever taught when you were a kid that the pilgrims put a fish in the hole when they planted corn?

Speaker 1: 14:55

Yes, yes, in order to kind of like fertilizer.

Speaker 2: 14:58

I went and I looked it up again this one gentleman that wrote this one letter the way he actually described it was they used shad, which is a tiny little fish you can catch with a net. You could catch bunches of them with a net. What he actually says is they used them as fertilizer. What I was taught was a kid is they'd put it in the hole with the corn seed. But that probably wasn't it. They would probably dry them out and grind it up Basically sardines, small fish and they would then just work them into the soil before you planted. And when the fish rotted after a few weeks, then you'd plant, probably how it did it. But it's just an interesting story that we were taught as kids is that the Indians and in fact the Indians did teach them how to grow things and the initial colonists and the Indians were getting on quite well.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Now let me just pause for just a second, because we do have people all over the world listening. We're saying Indians, they're Native Americans. They were named Indians not out of spite or out of anything else. It's because, during the exploration of the world, they were seeking a way closer route to India. Whenever they came across America, they named them Indians, native Americans, indians. So yeah, the proper term these days is Native Americans.

Speaker 2: 16:19

And as we speak the proper, at least culturally proper, term is Native Americans. But there are still official federal agencies called Bureau of Indian.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Affairs. Yes, absolutely Things like this.

Speaker 2: 16:31

And so, no, nothing derogatorily intended. So we now have these pilgrims, these Englishmen, getting along quite well with the Indians and working together to help survive in what is now the northeastern part of the United States. By the end of the first year they were so grateful because they had a great corn harvest, they had planted barley and had done pretty well with the barley. They had hunted a lot and had game animals. And again, this one letter written back from this one gentleman said we were doing quite well, we had plenty to eat and in the fall, after they had gotten the crops in, the Indians would come, they would invite them in their homes. He said they had a three-day festival where they had a joyous affair. They had plenty of meat, they had game birds, they had venison, they had corn, they feasted and had a big three-day party. Basically, and giving thanks to God for the harvest and getting them through that first year.

Speaker 1: 17:38

And these were two groups of people that were getting along. They were trading amongst each other of different things. They were sharing different cultural things the Native Americans in regards to what they would do here, and the separatists, the pilgrims, would share what they had from Western European technology and things like that, but they were both living off the land. Again, it was helpful to the people to know, because there's native plants and species of things that were grown here that weren't in Europe and vice versa, and ones you could use for medicine and things like that.

Speaker 1: 18:14

So they were mutually getting along.

Speaker 2: 18:16

So that wasn't the holiday of Thanksgiving, but that was the first time that we would call it Thanksgiving. The Puritans didn't use the word Thanksgiving. The word first came into play was again. This was 1620. By the late 1700s, of course.

Speaker 1: 18:35

now there was large populations there, there was the American Revolutionary War, and we had already broken free from England, broke free from England, we were our own country.

Speaker 2: 18:46

And in the first years of George Washington's presidency he issued a proclamation. I want to read part of that here. This is dated October 3, 1789, by President George Washington, and it was just a proclamation. I'll read pieces of this and not the whole thing. But the reason I read this is because this was the first official holiday by the United States government around Thanksgiving, and it explains here why they were doing it and what the purpose was. So it says again, it's a proclamation, whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Now, before we go any further, the first half of the first sentence of Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation says it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God. They considered it a duty of all peoples to acknowledge the providence of God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and to humbly implore his protection and favor. And whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. Okay, so get the picture. The President of the United States says both houses of Congress have asked me to give a proclamation of public thanksgiving and prayer to God.

Speaker 1: 20:22

The backdrop of this is the new nation. So while America had claimed its independence in 1776, it had the Revolutionary War and then it wasn't the. They went through the Constitution. It wasn't until 1789 that the actual Constitution was ratified and the government set in place and the first president elected may have been 1786. But in any case, george Washington is the first president and we have our first Congress. This is all.

Speaker 1: 20:52

During that time and during the Revolutionary War, united States was a new concept of people owning their own property, people heverning themselves, breaking away from the kingships that had existed since the times of judges. Right as we go back, this was a whole new thing and during that whole history of the Revolutionary War, there were several, several times that Washington, who was the commander in chief at that time of the armed forces, appealed to God, and there were different things that happened during that time. So this is the backdrop. The people of the United States viewed their breakaway and their being able to become their own nation, something that God had put a blessing on and attributed it to God, excuse me.

Speaker 2: 21:41

Go ahead and give one just recommendation here. There's every now and then you'll hear debate amongst people about what the original founding fathers of the United States believed, what they were. The Christians were. They deists. The best documentation that I found was a book of quotes written by a man named Federer F-E-D-E-R-E-R Federer, I believe. His first name was William, I believe, but the last name was Federer F-E-D-E-R-E-R, and it's a giant book of just quotes on what these people believed about God and what they didn't. We're not getting somebody else's interpretation of history and the electronic version is too giant to actually print. I'm going to encourage you. There's a print version, but there's also an e-book that you can get by Federer F-E-D-E-R-E-R, and it goes into many, if not all. It's just a massive work of quotations that show exactly what these people believed in. They were not all Christians. They all had a great honor and care for the Word of God and many, if not most, of them were Christians. It is not the case that the Christians were a minority.

Speaker 1: 23:01

And the freedom of religion to worship the way you wanted to worship. That all comes rooted out of what you just went through. That's the background of a lot of the people that were coming to what's now the United States to be able to worship God in the way that they felt that they should be worshiped. He should be worshiped.

Speaker 2: 23:18

He instituted a new idea, which was you could be a citizen of a country and have more than one kind of church there. This was a relatively new idea. First amendment to the United States Constitution Congress shall not institute a religion. They left it to the states. And many of the states did have a state church because their feeling was okay, they want to go off and have their own. They can. Of course, now we've flipped it all upside down, trying to expunge all religion from society, but that's neither here. Back to Washington's proclamation Again, both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially a form of government, for their safety and happiness.

Speaker 2: 24:17

He goes on to say that he's going to give the next Thursday in November to have a people devoted to the great and glorious being of God, who is the beneficent offer of all things. They're good or ever will be good, and men are united in being thankful for his protection. We may then unite in most unbelievably offering our prayers and supplications to the Lord and ruler of nations. Talking about God and beseech him to pardon our transgressions? When's the last time you saw President of the United States saying we need to pray to God and ask him to forgive us of our sins?

Speaker 1: 24:56

This is something else that is not talked about. Our founding fathers knew that what it was for was not perfect. They knew that there were things that were there and that needed to still be ironed out, acknowledging, like you said, the sins.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Lastly, in this proclamation, george Washington's proclamation, the proclamation was not only for Thanksgiving and prayer to God but, quote, to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue and the increase of science among us. Close quote no issue with religion and science and no issue with the official part of the government issuing a proclamation for Thanksgiving and prayer to the one true religion. Again, that's right out of if any question about what they believed about religion. That one thing ought to answer. Now there's another one in. Steve, I think you've got a copy of Abraham Lincoln's. Time goes on. The George Washington one was just like a one day one, so there was another one under during the Civil War days.

Speaker 1: 25:58

We fast forward and now we have a civil war that has been going on and the main issue for the Civil War was slavery. I mean, there is an issue of state rights. Than the states said look, we opted in to form together, we can also opt out and succeed anytime we want to. So that was a issue for sure.

Speaker 1: 26:18

That's what they held that the main thing was over slavery. Abraham Lincoln was the president at the time and had been elected, and and that had sparked the Civil War to start. Here we are. We had been going amongst the Civil War for several years now in a little bit of context.

Speaker 2: 26:34

During the Civil War there was. These battles were just terrible. There'd be 20,000, 30,000 people killed in a day. And there they were in Washington getting these war reports back that 30,000 people got killed. And these are just huge numbers. In the midst of all of that death and depression, what did Abraham Lincoln do?

Speaker 1: 26:58

So he has here. He says the year is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies to these bounties which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come. So again, he's starting off and saying we owe these everything that we have to somebody else. And he says others have been added which are so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. So now he gets into the proclamation part no human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. So he's not saying that any human right.

Speaker 2: 27:49

No human worked out all these benefits.

Speaker 1: 27:50

They are the gracious gifts of the most high God who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins and again the backdrop is this civil war that's going on over slavery hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

Speaker 1: 28:04

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and 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 as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father, who dwelleth in the heavens, 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 perseverance and disobedience, commend to this 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, tranquility and union.

Speaker 2: 29:14

Great words. So what do we have? We have the initial pilgrims giving thanks to God for living during that first year. We have George Washington's Day, where both houses of Congress ask for the president to give a day of thanksgiving to God and to promote true religion, and then again the one you just read, with Abraham Lincoln still giving thanks to God. Those were all the foundations of the holiday. The official holiday that we have now wasn't really codified into a annual holiday until the 1930s, under Franklin Roosevelt. To be honest, we have to say by the time it got to him, yes, it was thanksgiving to God, but it was really. We need to promote the economy here. It's a way to go buy some stuff and stimulate the economy. It had already had some secularism creeping in, but nevertheless those are the roots of the American holiday known as thanksgiving. Of course, we shouldn't leave this without contrasting what is thanksgiving today? Steve?

Speaker 1: 30:19

Mainly, it has turned into this big homecoming A lot of people. It's one of the biggest travel days in the United States because people that have sons and daughters go back to their family homes, to their parents, and they all come back and that's good. It is good. It's a time of visitation, a time of celebration, a time of sports People gather around in football and parades and things like that Long weekend off, exactly because it's Thursday and most of the companies that aren't in the retail business they shut down on Thursday and other companies even stay shut down and give a holiday on Friday. So it becomes a big long four day holiday weekend and even some people take that whole week off of Monday, tuesday and Wednesday. But it's turned into a really a family homecoming type of a deal. We should always remember that to give thanks to God for everything that we have and the families that we have.

Speaker 2: 31:16

Family is good, and getting together with families and recognizing the bounty of what we are that's all those are good. I think sometimes we all too often forget God and don't pray, don't even stop sometimes to recognize God for what he's given us. But if we look back, God really is good.

Speaker 1: 31:35

Yes.

Speaker 2: 31:36

Even in times where I mean, if we can go down the list, steve, there's us and the people we know of all had tragedy happens in our lives. Somebody we're talking to now, I'm sure, has a tragedy that they're right in the midst of. They're going to ask how could I be thankful for this? The writers in the Bible are the same way. There's writers in the Old Testament, the Old Testament prophets, saying Lord, how long are you going to allow this horrible ness to keep going and when are you going to step in?

Speaker 2: 32:02

The message is always God's got a good message and he's got a good timing on things and he always works things out to his glory and our good. We really should give God thanks for the many blessings he does give us and the fact that we get to live in his world and breathe his air and eat his food and whatever good things have happened to us have, as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington said, come from the author of all. That is good. We just wanted to take a quick minute and recognize Thanksgiving for what it is, which is a way to give thanks, but it again started with people that had a very high reverence for God.

Speaker 1: 32:42

We hope that you've enjoyed this kind of departure from really everything that we've done.

Speaker 1: 32:46

It's not a topical, it's not doctrinal, it's not anything from the book, but we thought off the cuff a little bit. Hey, I think it would probably be nice to be able to do that, since it's coinciding with whenever we publish our sessions, and we hope that you enjoy it. Join us next time when we get back into the book that we're studying, and we hope that you've appreciated this and you'll continue to follow us here as we reason through the book Crossing widerENCE.