The history behind the festival of Thanksgiving

The United States of America is preparing for their Thanksgiving Day, the annual national holiday celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year.

This year, the festival will be celebrated on November 24. But how did it get the status of a national holiday?

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England , carrying 102 passengers, an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod.

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Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring.

They made new allies in the Wampanoag, a local native American tribe, who taught them farming local crops. In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organised a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”, the festival lasted for three days. 

US Presidents, including George Washington, John Adams and James Madison, designated one or more days of thanks throughout their presidencies.

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But it became a national holiday when in 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared that a national Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated every November in the country.

These days, most Americans consider the holiday a day to gather and express their thanks through food, family, and football.