Thanksgiving Brings Happiness to All

by: Kendell Shanklin

On November 25, Americans fill their tables with food in cel­ebration of the cooperation between the Native Americans and English colonists on a special holiday called Thanksgiving.

In 1621, Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians held the first feast of Thanksgiving and have continued to do so for about four centuries. However, the feast was really a common tradition for a different reason.

Previously, “Thanksgiving” was a feast in celebration of the autumn harvest and thanks for successful bushels of crops. Even before the European colonists had arrived in America, the Native Americans organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances and other various events in thankfulness.

Thanksgiving was also celebrated in 1619, in Berkley Plantation, where people knelt in prayer and pledged “thanksgiving” to their God for their healthy arrival after a long voyage across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, whoever began the tradition of Thanksgiving, it still continues today.

In present day, a Thanksgiving meal revolves around the turkey, but that was not the case back in the 1600s. Pilgrims ate many dif­ferent kinds of meats and a select few dishes of vegetables, as the variety people are now provided with was not as grand then.

There were also no sweets such as: cakes, breads and pie due to the sugar (that had been brought over on the Mayflower) had, in time, ceased in supply.

Two common Thanksgiving symbols, apart from the Pilgrims with large hats, belt buckles and turkey, are the cornucopia and pumpkins. The cornucopia represents the many harvests of vegetables and fruit that were available and eaten by the Pilgrims during the first sea­sonal feast. Pumpkins were just a widely-cooked dish.

Though it was celebrated, Thanksgiving was not a national holi­day until the Civil War in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln announced it to be a national holiday celebrated each November.

Other countries celebrate this holiday in their own forms, tra­ditions, dates and sometimes upon a different title. Apart from the olden traditions of the European colonists and Native Americans, people today create artwork, teach the history, have parades, wish on the turkey’s wishbone and sometimes