When Was The First Thanksgiving?

Like much of the world, here in the UK, we’ve adopted many Americanisms, from Black Friday sales to blow-out Halloween celebrations. But one holiday we won’t be importing is Thanksgiving, so firmly rooted it is in American history – though you may find restaurants hosting special menus and parties for American expats here in the UK. Today, Thanksgiving is all about family feasting, fireworks and togetherness – as well as Black Friday sales the next day. But its history is much more potent than that; here’s a brief rundown.

A Brief History Of Thanksgiving

Dating back to the 1600s, Thanksgiving is one of the oldest pieces of modern American history. Its roots can be traced to 1620, when English settlers or ‘Pilgrims’ departed from Plymouth, Devon aboard the Mayflower and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, landing in what would soon become New Plymouth (or just Plymouth, in today’s Massachusetts).

Idealising the untapped frontier of America as a ‘new promised land’, the Pilgrims sought freedom from the religious persecution experienced in the UK. They had previously sought refuge in Holland, and a journey to the New World was incredibly risky: in 1607, the settlers of the first English colony in America, Jamestown, mostly died within their first year across the Atlantic, while the mysterious story of the lost colony of Roanoke and stories of attacks from indigenous groups warned most of the English off.

Nevertheless, 135 Pilgrims made the journey to America, arriving in November and being immediately hit by a harsh winter which killed half of the settlers in the first few months. The rest survived only thanks to help from local indigenous people who taught them food gathering and other survival skills.

When Was The First Thanksgiving?

In 1621, after their first successful harvest, the 53 surviving Pilgrims invited 90 Wampanoag Native Americans to celebrate with them, including Chief Massasoit. In retrospect, this event has been described as the ‘First Thanksgiving’. They ate meat, corn, squash and berries – contemporary foods that wouldn’t be found at a Thanksgiving dinner today. But the event was by no means an annual occasion from then on.

Thanksgiving has its roots in that 1621 dinner, but it only evolved with further inspiration from harvest festivals, feast days and prayers of thanks. Naturally, this perspective is very one-sided: Thanksgiving is weighted with loss for Native American people. For example, in 1637, the Massachusetts Bay Colony – a Puritan colony which evolved after the Pilgrims had arrived in 1620 – declared a day of thanks after it successfully brutally massacred the Pequot tribe. One man’s thanksgiving, in this sense, is another man’s ultimate loss. While many Americans consider Thanksgiving a time for gratitude and familial togetherness, it is a time of mourning for Native American communities who lost their land, culture and countless lives to settlers who brought violence and new diseases to their doors. The 1621 harvest celebration is also considered to be a simplified, sanitised and even romanticised account of settler-native relations.

Days of thanks were sporadically declared throughout the American Revolution, but all remained only locally observed. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed the nation should honour the creation and adoption of the Constitution with a day of thanks – but again, there was no national consistency, and different colonies and states celebrated at different times based on their own histories and religious traditions. In October 1863, Thanksgiving was finally declared an annual national holiday by Abraham Lincoln; he hoped the holiday would encourage hope and healing amid the Civil War.

When Is Thanksgiving 2024?

In 2024, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday 28 November; the holiday is always celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, and has been since 1941 when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into Congress. In 2025, Thanksgiving will fall on Thursday 27 November 2024.

Fancy a taste of Thanksgiving at home? Try this pumpkin pie recipe.