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Thanksgiving's Surprising Origins
26 Nov
Summary
- The first Thanksgiving was a harvest festival, not an invitation.
- Pilgrims and Wampanoag may have initially met with misunderstanding.
- Wishbone tradition predates Thanksgiving by thousands of years.
The origins of Thanksgiving are rooted in a 1621 harvest festival in Massachusetts, though historical accounts differ from romanticized versions. While Pilgrims celebrated, there's no record of the Wampanoag tribe receiving an official invitation, suggesting they may have arrived unexpectedly. This initial encounter was marked by a misunderstanding involving gunfire, which led to the tribe joining the feast.
Relations between the Pilgrims and Native Americans soured significantly by the 1670s, leading to conflict and hardship for indigenous peoples. The holiday's establishment as a national event in 1863 by President Lincoln aimed to foster unity during the Civil War.
Curiously, the popular wishbone tradition, a staple of modern Thanksgiving, predates the holiday itself by millennia. Originating with the Etruscans in ancient Italy, the practice of breaking bones for divination eventually evolved into the custom known today.
