"What you learned about the 'first Thanksgiving' isn't true. Here's the real story..."

[moose65]

1. There are a lot of myths surrounding Thanksgiving

Most people probably think that the Pilgrims started the Thanksgiving tradition by having a harvest feast every year. The Pilgrims had exactly ONE harvest festival, in 1621. The next year their crops didn’t do well, so they didn’t have another. Massachusetts Bay Colony did have some festivals later, in the 1630s I think, but they didn’t refer to them as Thanksgiving. To the Pilgrims and the Puritans, a “thanksgiving” would have been a purely religious observance - not a secular feast.

The Pilgrims’ “Thanksgiving” was pretty much forgotten for over 200 years, until Josiah Winslow’s writings were rediscovered in the 1840s. When Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving during the Civil War, the Pilgrims had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t until the 1870s or 1880s that some folks from Plymouth, wanting to build up tourism and help local businesses, sought to cash in on the Pilgrim legend. It’s kinda like when Betsy Ross’s family wanted to cash in on the legend of the first flag. The Pilgrims were conveniently declared the founders of Thanksgiving and the rest is history 😆😆