Date: Fri 24-Nov-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDREA

Quick Words:

Thanksgiving-custom-holiday

Full Text:

With illustration: Thanksgiving, A Holiday Grown Out Of Custom

B Y A NDREA Z IMMERMANN

Let's talk turkey. About Thanksgiving, that is. Today's American tradition is

much the same as it was almost four centuries ago, but during the intervening

years of wars, industrial revolution, and changing social structure, the

holiday was slow to gain national recognition and observance.

Celebration of the harvest is a custom that dates as far back as the record of

man. But in this country, we measure the length of our tradition from the time

of the Pilgrim's three-day festival to commemorate the harvest in the fall of

1621. One of the participants, Edward Winslow, described the event in a letter

dated December of that year.

Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we

might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the

fruit of our labours. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a

little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst

other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst

us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom

for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five

deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor and

upon the Captain and others.

The harvest celebration became an annual customer in Connecticut in 1649, but

it wasn't until the end of the 18th century that all New England states had

adopted the tradition. George Washington proclaimed November 26, 1789 as the

first national day of thanksgiving. "But the day still had not become an

institution. Gradually the idea was spread to the West by New England migrants

as well as by the energetic urging of Mrs Sarah J. Hale, the

early-19th-century editor of the famous Godey's Lady's Book of Philadelphia, a

widely read women's magazine," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica .

Newtown residents not only viewed Thanksgiving as a family event, but it was a

grand time to socialize, too. An 1831 invitation to a Thanksgiving Ball at P.

Smith's Assembly Room in Brookfield bears witness to this.

INSERT THANKSGIVING BALL INVITATION HERE

By the mid 1800s, most of the northern states observed the holiday but the

Southern states were reticent to adopt a New England tradition. President

Lincoln proclaimed a national harvest festival on November 26, 1863, it has

been proclaimed as such each year since by the president, and governor of each

state.

In his 1929 Proclamation, Connecticut Governor John H. Trumbull stated,

"...The year just past has given us particular occasion for thankfulness. Our

country is at peace with the world. More than that, we have been conspicuously

successful in a constructive effort to stabilize that peace, and to carry to

other lands the new message of tolerance and good will among the nations..."

One year later, the governor's Thanksgiving message reflected his belief in

the stability of the government, and "intrinsic soundness of our economic

structure" despite the difficulties wrought by the Great Depression. "None of

this has been attained without intervals of hardship and distress, many of

them far more disturbing than the business readjustment from which we are now

emerging. Such times have but served to stimulate inventors' ingenuity, to

develop social conscience, and to build up all those spiritual values which

thrive most persistently in the face of difficulty."

Congress passed a resolution in December 1941 that the fourth Thursday of

November would be a national legal holiday.