We are officially in the holiday season, which is a time for joy and laughter, but is also a time for thanksgiving.
In September of 1620, a ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England in hopes of reaching the New World. The Mayflower carried 102 passengers who were a combination of religious separatists seeking a place where they could freely practice their faith and others who were lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership.
After 66 days at sea, the Mayflower landed near the tip of Cape Cod and one month later crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims began to establish a village at Plymouth. The first winter in the New World was brutal and only about half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring.
As the settlers moved ashore, they were introduced to a Native American named Squanto. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish, and avoid poisonous plants. Squanto also helped the settlers form an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local Native American tribe.
In November of 1621, with the success of the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest, the Governor organized a celebratory feast, inviting the colony’s Native American allies. This celebration lasted for three days and later became known as the first Thanksgiving. While we do not know the exact menu of that first meal, dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods and due to the Mayflower’s dwindling sugar supply, the meal did not include pies or other desserts that we typically associate with Thanksgiving.
For more than two centuries after that first Thanksgiving, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.
Source: history.com
