Media Contacts:

Dr. William Harris, 919/ 513-2215 or william_harris@ncsu.edu
Mick Kulikowski, News Services, 919/ 515-8387 or mick_kulikowski@ncsu.edu

Nov. 21, 2000

Thanksgiving Folklore at Odds With Historical Record

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

If you think Thanksgiving has existed since the 1621 feast at Plymouth, Mass., and the day has always been celebrated in the current Thanksgiving spirit -- complete with images of grateful Pilgrims and beneficent Native Americans gathering as friends at the feast -- it's time to think again, says Dr. William Harris, professor of history at North Carolina State University.

History isn't that simple.

"New England Puritans, or their descendants, wrote the early histories of the colonies," Harris said. "They emphasized the story of the Pilgrims who established a religious commonwealth in America." Other colonists in the New World also sometimes held ceremonies to commemorate a successful fall harvest, Harris notes, but "as the years passed, the New England accounts entered American folklore to the exclusion of these colonies."

Popular culture oversimplifies the often complex relationships that existed between Pilgrims and Indians, Harris adds. While relations were for the most part good at first, cultural aspects -- such as religion -- forced clashes between colonists and Indians, with colonists treating Indians like savages. "The militant Protestants like the Puritans, who were products of the Europeans’ struggle against Catholicism, believed the Indians were heathens who refused to be converted," he said. Other struggles ensued as colonists moved away from the coast and sought to take over Indian land.

Declarations of a national day of thanksgiving only occurred randomly for the next 200 years or so, until the Civil War. In 1861, war-weary workers in Washington, D.C., received a day off for a thanksgiving observance. As the war progressed, President Lincoln also proclaimed days of humiliation, fasting and prayer. In the fall of 1863, he established a uniform day for thanksgiving, and in 1864, he issued a proclamation setting aside the last Thursday in November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to Almighty God" and asking Americans to "reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers...to the Great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of Peace, Union and Harmony throughout the land."

Thanksgiving as we know it on the fourth Thursday in November only became a national holiday -- as opposed to a voluntary day of observance -- in 1941, during the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.

--kulikowski--

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