Enjoy a little Thanksgiving history before the holiday

Thanksgiving has an incredibly interesting history, some of which you may not have been aware.

Did you realize it took the pilgrims 66 days to make the crossing to the New World and they were subjected to terrible conditions involving lack of working plumbing and disease?

Gov. William Bradford invited the Wampanoag tribe to the new settlement of Plymouth Colony for a feast that first fall. The Native Americans supplied five deer while the colonists added the labors of four men sent out “fowling.”

The Pilgrims didn’t even bother to bake a pie. In fact when the Indians showed up, White Man had no idea how to cook all the food needed for a feast so the Indians showed them how to party.

The Indians actually outnumbered the Pilgrims on that first Thanksgiving in 1621. The Indians were peaceful though and didn’t realize that it would be their last majority at a gathering of White Men and Indians until 1876 at the Little Bighorn.

You probably don’t know it was the efforts of a columnist that led to the designation of Thanksgiving as a holiday. My great-great-aunt Sarah Josepha Hale (she wrote the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and well, she could be my great-great aunt) began editorializing to establish Thanksgiving as an official national holiday. Sure enough, 36 years later President Lincoln tired of reading her diatribes every year and ordered the first national observance of the holiday. Ironically it was 1863 at the height of the Civil War when we had little for which to be thankful.

Thanksgiving was celebrated the last Thursday of November until the Great Depression rolled around. Once again, with little to be thankful for, we made a change in the holiday. President Franklin Roosevelt figured American retailers would benefit from an extra week of Christmas sales so he moved it back.

“Franksgiving,” as Roosevelt’s debacle was labeled, went over like turkey pellets in the eggnog bowl and the following year he changed it to the fourth Thursday. Nowadays retailers just totally ignore what day Thanksgiving falls on and begin their holiday quest shortly before Halloween and this year is no different as I’ve already taken advantage of Black Friday deals. It was a Friday, but instead of the one after Thanksgiving it was the first one in November.

A big tradition today, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, was held in 1924. It wasn’t until 1927 that a marionette builder came up with the idea of huge tethered balloons in the parade. In 1928 at the end of the parade they just cut the helium-filled balloons loose to drift away. A tag was sewn onto the fabric of the balloon with instructions to return the balloon to Macy’s for a free gift.

In 1929 the Thanksgiving tradition of my family loading up shotguns and hunting balloon animals was born.

Enough history, here’s my Thanksgiving blessing to all my readers.

May your stuffing be tasty

May your turkey be plump,

May your potatoes and gravy

Have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious

And your pies take the prize,

And may your Thanksgiving dinner

Stay off your thighs!

— Anonymous

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]