Thanksgiving: history and traditions of the American holiday

On the fourth Thursday of November, America comes to a standstill. Airports overflow, highways freeze, and in millions of kitchens a turkey has been roasting since dawn. Around the table, three generations gather for the most sacred meal of the American calendar — more than Christmas, perhaps. Each, in turn, says what they are grateful for. This is Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday: secular but near-sacred, familial above all, anchored in a national narrative that many know by heart — and that historians, for their part, never stop nuancing. Behind the turkey and the gratitude hides a more complex story, made of survival, encounter and, too, painful memory.

The founding narrative: Plymouth, 1621#

The origin myth is set in 1621, at Plymouth, in present-day Massachusetts. A year earlier, about a hundred English Pilgrims, religious dissenters, had landed from the Mayflower to found a colony. The first winter was deadly: nearly half the colonists perished from cold, hunger and disease.

Their survival owed in part to the help of the Wampanoag, the Native American people of the region, who taught them to cultivate corn and to work the land. In the autumn of 1621, after a first successful harvest, colonists and Wampanoag shared a three-day feast, which became in American memory the "first Thanksgiving."

The "first Thanksgiving" was not an instituted holiday: it was a harvest meal, shared between survivors and those without whom they would not have survived. The national ritual came much later.

From local feast to national holiday#

For two centuries, Thanksgiving remained a regional tradition, mostly practiced in New England, celebrated on varying dates depending on the colonies and then the states. There was no unified national holiday.

The turning point came in the middle of the Civil War. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, seeking to reunite a torn country, proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving, set on the last Thursday of November. The date was later adjusted to the fourth Thursday of November. Thanksgiving thus became an instrument of national unity as much as a harvest festival.

The Thanksgiving table#

The heart of the holiday is the meal, whose menu is of remarkable stability from one home to another. The centerpiece is the roast turkey, accompanied by stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and the indispensable cranberry sauce, whose acidity cuts against the rest.

For dessert reigns the pumpkin pie, sometimes joined by pecan pie. The meal is eaten in the early afternoon, and abundance is the rule: Thanksgiving is one of the days when Americans eat the most. Many families open the meal with a round of the table where each expresses their gratitude for the past year.

Parade, football and Black Friday#

Thanksgiving spills far beyond the table. In the morning, millions of Americans watch the Macy's parade in New York, a giant procession of balloons and floats televised since the 1920s. The afternoon is often devoted to American football, another immovable ritual of the day.

And then comes the next day: Black Friday, the Friday of massive sales that launches the Christmas shopping season and has been exported worldwide, often detached from any reference to Thanksgiving. The holiday of gratitude leads, paradoxically, to the great ritual of consumption.

A holiday revisited: the other side of the story#

The heroic narrative of the "first Thanksgiving" long masked a darker reality. For many Native Americans, the holiday celebrates the beginning of a colonization that would, in the following decades and centuries, bring dispossession, epidemics and massacres. Since 1970, some mark the day as a National Day of Mourning.

This critical memory has transformed the way the holiday is viewed. Many Americans keep Thanksgiving as a precious family moment while acknowledging the complexity of its history — an example of how a nation reexamines its founding myths without necessarily abandoning them.

Note: Canada also celebrates its Thanksgiving, but in October, with distinct origins tied more to the harvests than to the Plymouth narrative. Seasonal gratitude is not an American monopoly.

To discover Thanksgiving is to discover America in miniature: its taste for the national narrative, its cult of family and abundance, but also its capacity to revisit its own past. Behind the golden turkey stands a question each culture asks in its own way: for what, and toward whom, are we grateful?

FAQ#

What is the origin of Thanksgiving? The tradition goes back to a harvest feast shared in 1621 at Plymouth between the English Pilgrims and the Native American Wampanoag people, after a deadly first winter. The national holiday, however, was instituted much later.

When does Thanksgiving take place? In the United States, on the fourth Thursday of November, a date set from President Lincoln's proclamation in 1863. Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving in October, with different origins.

What do people eat at Thanksgiving? The central dish is the roast turkey, accompanied by stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce. For dessert, pumpkin pie is indispensable.

Why is Thanksgiving sometimes contested? Because for many Native Americans, the holiday celebrates the beginning of a colonization with dramatic consequences. Since 1970, some mark it as a National Day of Mourning.

Photo credits: the images used in this article come from Pexels and Unsplash and are royalty-free.