Long before turkey and football, Thanksgiving was a day set apart to thank God. From a hungry colony on the coast of New England to a nation torn by civil war, the story of this holiday is the story of people who, in hard times and good, remembered Someone to thank.

Thanks on New Shores

The Pilgrims were not the first Europeans in America to stop and thank God. In 1565, the Spanish commander Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed at what became St. Augustine, Florida, with about 800 people: troops, ship’s crew, and would-be colonists. They began by holding a Mass of Thanksgiving, and afterward they feasted with the Timucua people who lived nearby. [6]

On December 4, 1619, a band of 38 English settlers reached Berkeley Hundred on Virginia’s James River. Their sponsors had instructed them that the day of arrival should be kept every year as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” [5] Wherever they landed, these early arrivals understood that reaching shore alive was a gift.

A Hard Crossing and a Harder Winter

In September 1620, the Mayflower left England carrying 102 passengers. Some were Separatists, believers who had broken with the Church of England so they could worship God as conscience led them. Others joined the voyage hoping to own land and prosper. [1]

The crossing took 66 days, and they came to anchor off Cape Cod, well north of where they had meant to settle. [1] Before anyone went ashore, 41 men signed a brief compact to govern themselves. It begins, “In the name of God, Amen,” and says the voyage was undertaken “for the Glory of God.” [4]

They reached Plymouth in December, and the winter that followed was merciless. Most of the company stayed on the cramped ship, where cold, scurvy, and sickness took a terrible toll. By the time spring arrived, roughly half had died.  [2]

Help from an Unexpected Friend

In March 1621, a Native man named Samoset walked boldly into the settlement and greeted the startled colonists in broken English. He told them of Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, a native of the area who spoke English even better than he did, and whose own story reads like providence. [7]

Years earlier, in 1614, an English captain named Thomas Hunt had kidnapped Squanto and carried him off to be sold as a slave in Spain. He got free, made his way to England, and finally returned home in 1619, only to find that nearly everyone in his village of Patuxet had died in an epidemic. The Pilgrims had built Plymouth on the very ground where he grew up. [14] [7]

Squanto stayed with the struggling colonists as their interpreter and guide. He showed them how to plant corn, where to catch fish, and how to find what they needed to survive. He also helped the settlers make peace with Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag people. [7] Governor William Bradford later wrote that Squanto was “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.” [7] [14]

The Harvest Feast of 1621

That autumn, the colony gathered its first good harvest. Governor Bradford sent four men out to hunt birds so the settlers could rejoice together. Massasoit arrived with about ninety of his men, who went out and brought back five deer. For three days, English and Wampanoag feasted together. [2]

The exact date was never recorded; the celebration took place sometime that autumn. Our most detailed account comes from a letter Edward Winslow wrote to England, dated December 11, 1621. [2] That later date has led some to place the feast in December, but it came earlier, at harvest time.

Winslow closed his description with a confession of faith: “by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” [2] Only months earlier, half his companions had died. Now he spoke of plenty and gave the credit to God.

The Pilgrims themselves probably would not have called this feast a “thanksgiving.” To them, that word meant something more solemn. [3]

1623: Fasting, Rain, and True Thanksgiving

For the Pilgrims, a day of thanksgiving was a holy day of church services, often with fasting rather than feasting. They also kept days of “humiliation and prayer” when trouble came. Their most famous thanksgiving began with one of those. [3]

In the summer of 1623, a drought threatened the colony’s corn; for six weeks almost no rain fell. The settlers set apart a day to humble themselves and pray. Before they left their worship, clouds gathered, and the next morning soft, gentle rain began to fall. [3]

The colonists saw this as a direct answer to prayer. In gratitude, they set apart another solemn day to give “glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God.” [3] So the holiday we now associate with feasting has roots in a day of fasting!

A Young Nation Gives Thanks

As the colonies grew, the custom of setting apart days for fasting and for thanksgiving spread throughout New England. [1]

During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving, celebrated December 18, 1777, after the American victory at Saratoga. It was the first time the young nation gave thanks together. [13] [1]

In 1789, at the request of Congress, President George Washington issued the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation. Quoting Congress’s request, he called Americans to a day of public thanksgiving and prayer on Thursday, November 26, “acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.” [8] In 2026, Thanksgiving falls on November 26 once again. [1]

The Mother of Thanksgiving

After Washington, Thanksgiving remained scattered and inconsistent. Some presidents proclaimed it and others did not. States chose their own dates, and much of the South hardly knew the tradition. [1]

One determined woman set out to change that. Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” first took up the cause in 1827, publishing essays in favor of a national Thanksgiving while she edited a Boston magazine. Beginning in 1846, as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, she wrote letter after letter to governors, senators, and presidents. She kept at it for 36 years. [9] [1]

Thanks in the Darkest Hour

Hale’s persistence finally succeeded in the middle of the Civil War. In July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg had left more than 50,000 American casualties. On September 28, she wrote directly to President Abraham Lincoln. [9]

Five days later, on October 3, 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” Even in a year of grief, he called the nation’s blessings “the gracious gifts of the Most High God.” He also asked Americans to remember widows, orphans, and all who suffered, and to pray for God “to heal the wounds of the nation.” [10] [9]

Since then, Americans have kept Thanksgiving every year. [9] In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved it a week earlier to boost holiday shopping during the Great Depression, which caused an uproar. In 1941, Congress fixed the holiday on the fourth Thursday of November, where it remains today. [1]

Someone to Thank

From Plymouth to the present, one thing has never changed. At every turning point, in famine and plenty, war and peace, people paused to give thanks not only for their blessings, but to the God who gave them. As we gather around our own tables this year, may we do the same.

For those who love the Jewish roots of our faith, there is a beautiful echo here. Long before Plymouth, God commanded Israel to keep Sukkot. the Feast of Tabernacles, a seven-day harvest festival of rejoicing before the LORD (Leviticus 23:39–43; Deuteronomy 16:13–15). The Pilgrims knew their Bibles well, and some writers believe Sukkot shaped their harvest celebration; the resemblance between the two feasts is often noted. [11] No one can fix the date of the 1621 feast, but historians’ guesses run from September 21 to November 9, with early October the likeliest. That would put it close to the season of Sukkot. [11] And the Hebrew word for thanksgiving, todah (תּוֹדָה), comes from yadah, “to give thanks,” the same verb behind hodu in the Psalms’ great refrain: [12]

הוֹדוּ לַיהוָה כִּי־טוֹב כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ

Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo

“Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” (Psalm 136:1, NKJV)

Sources

1. HISTORY.com Editors, “Thanksgiving 2026”
2. Pilgrim Hall Museum, “The ‘First Thanksgiving'” (Winslow’s 1621 letter and Bradford’s account)
3. Plimoth Patuxet Museums, “A Day of Thanksgiving, Summer 1623” (Winslow, Good Newes from New England)
4. Avalon Project, Yale Law School, “Mayflower Compact: 1620”
5. Encyclopedia Virginia, “Ordinances Directions and Instructions to Captaine John Woodleefe” (1619)
6. Florida Museum of Natural History, “Before the Pilgrims, Floridians celebrated the ‘real’ first Thanksgiving”
7. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, “The remainder of Anno 1620” (original spelling), in American Literature, ed. Joel Gladd
8. George Washington’s Mount Vernon, “Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789” (full transcription)
9. National Park Service, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, “Lincoln and Thanksgiving”
10. The American Presidency Project, “Proclamation 106—Thanksgiving Day, 1863”
11. Linda Morel, “Thanksgiving’s Sukkot Roots,” Jewish Journal, November 20, 2003
12. Bible Hub, Strong’s Hebrew 8426, todah
13. Library of Congress, Continental Congress Thanksgiving proclamation, “In Congress, November 1, 1777” (broadside)
14. Pilgrim Hall Museum, “Tisquantum / Squanto”

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.