Thanksgiving is for Everyone

This holiday honoured Ceres their goddess of grains, agriculture, and death. Yes, a hobbled together deity is staring at you. She encompasses the holy trinity as much as her cousin Demeter did, but she also steals some attributes from Hades, as well as from Tulla, her cousin in Etruria.

The Jews

The Jews celebrate the feast of Shavuot. It commemorates the reception of the Ten Commandments as well as the bringing in of the first fruits from the fields. As the ancient Hebrew calendar was as stable as the Roman one, this feast is held in May or early June. For the use of the Christians it was renamed to Whitsun and filled with another meaning.

The second harvest festival in the Jewish calendar is Sukkoth, commemorating the living in huts in their wanderings from Egypt. It also gives thanks at the end of the harvest and thereby for the Promised Land Canaan itself.

The Christians

We already know of one harvest feast that went into the Christian calendar thanks to the Jews. But Christendom integrated another one into it. To convert the Saxons in 813, their Thanksgiving festival to Wotan (whom we name at least once a week still) was converted to the Christian holiday of St. Michael. Catholic and Reformed Church still have this festival in their liturgical calendars.

The United States

In 1621, after a hard and devastating first year in the New World the immigrant population called Pilgrims had a very successful and plentiful harvest. There was corn, fruits, vegetables, fish packed in salt, and smoke cured meats, enough to last the winter.

The migrants had beaten the odds. They had built homes in the wilderness, raised crops to keep them alive during winter, and they were at peace with the American Citizens called Indians. The migrant leader, William Bradford, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving that was to be shared by all, immigrants and Native American Citizens (Indians).

The custom of an annually celebrated thanksgiving held after harvest continued through the years. During the American Revolution a day of national thanksgiving was suggested by Continental Congress. In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom and by the midst of the 19th century many other states had followed. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln appointed a national day of Thanksgiving. Since then, each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of November as the holiday.

American Thanksgiving is an original festival, in the sense that it was free from any religious connotation. Surely, the settlers came from a Christian background, and St. Michael’s was known to them. But they invented this festival fresh and free of any old history. This one feast represents the American ideal of freedom and unity, free from all religious flimflammer, to be enjoyed by citizens and migrants alike. Christians and Muslims may enjoy it as much as any other religious group. It is uniquely and only American.

But this religious independence of the festival is permanently under threat by religious fanatics. Ware America, or you will lose this festival to the zealots, too.

A more detailed history of the festival in the American view may be read in The History of Thanksgiving.

A statement of a descendant of the original citizens may be found in Thanksgiving: A Native American Perspective.

As usual, I couldn’t resist, but this one is a must read: Turkey Myths, Legends And Facts.