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Learn what really happened in 1621, what foods were served, and how this harvest festival evolved into our national holiday. Every November, as the leaves turn golden and the air grows crisp, my family begins our annual ritual of planning our Thanksgiving feast. I cannot help but wonder about those who celebrated the very first Thanksgiving. What did they eat? How did they feel? The story behind this quintessential American holiday fascinates me, especially when I compare it to our modern celebrations with football games and pumpkin pie.
How It All Began: Plymouth Colony’s Harvest Celebration
The story most Americans know begins in 1620, when the Mayflower carried 102 passengers across the Atlantic to what would eventually become Massachusetts. These religious separatists (now known as Pilgrims) faced a brutal winter where nearly half of them perished from exposure, scurvy, and outbreaks of contagious disease.
When spring arrived, the survivors received unexpected help from members of the Wampanoag tribe, particularly Squanto, who spoke English from his previous encounters with European traders. He taught the colonists how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish, and avoid poisonous plants.
The Pilgrims did not actually call their fall 1621 gathering a “thanksgiving” feast. For them, thanksgiving was strictly a religious occasion, not a celebration involving recreational activities. What they experienced was more accurately a traditional English harvest festival, which customarily occurred in late September or early October.
The Real First Thanksgiving Menu
I always imagined turkey as the centerpiece of that original feast, just like on my grandmother’s table each year. Historical records tell a different story. According to primary accounts written by Edward Winslow and William Bradford, the menu likely included:
Venison brought by the Wampanoag
Seafood including cod, eel, and shellfish
Wild fowl (possibly duck or goose)
Corn prepared as a porridge
Native vegetables like squash and beans
Noticeably absent? Potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie staples on modern Thanksgiving tables across America. Potatoes had not yet become common in North America, sugar supplies had dwindled for the colonists, and they lacked proper ovens for baking pies.
A Three-Day Celebration With Unlikely Friendships
The gathering lasted three days and included about 90 Wampanoag men and 53 Pilgrims. This surprises most people I speak with they do not realize the indigenous participants outnumbered the colonists.
The relationship between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims was complex. Chief Massasoit had established a formal alliance with the colonists earlier that year, motivated partly by diplomatic strategy. The Wampanoag had been weakened by disease introduced by earlier European contact, and Massasoit sought allies against rival tribes.
I find myself reflecting on how different this gathering was from our contemporary understanding. It was not planned as a “thanksgiving” but emerged as a spontaneous celebration after the colonists’ first successful harvest in a strange land.
From Harvest Festival to National Holiday
So how did this one-time harvest celebration become our beloved national holiday? The path was neither direct nor quick. Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it so in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War.
Before that, thanksgiving observances varied widely by region. New England colonists regularly celebrated days of thanksgiving, but these were solemn religious occasions proclaimed in response to favorable events, like good harvests or military victories.
George Washington issued the first presidential thanksgiving proclamation in 1789, but the holiday did not stick as an annual tradition. It took the persistent advocacy of magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, who campaigned for a national Thanksgiving holiday for 36 years before Lincoln finally established it.
The Thanksgiving Legacy: Myth and Reality
The story of the First Thanksgiving has been mythologized over generations. Elementary school pageants portray friendship between Pilgrims and Native Americans without addressing the complex and often tragic history that followed.
For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving represents something quite different a reminder of betrayal and the devastating losses of land and life that came after those early encounters. When I gather with my family each November, I try to remember both the mythology and reality of Thanksgiving’s origins. The holiday has become something uniquely American evolving from a single harvest celebration to our national day of gratitude, food, and family.
Reference
Baker, J. W. (2009). Thanksgiving: The biography of an American holiday. University of New Hampshire Press.
Deetz, J., & Deetz, P. S. (2001). The times of their lives: Life, love, and death in Plymouth Colony. W.H. Freeman and Company.
Library of Congress. (2010). Primary documents in American history: Thanksgiving. https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/thanksgiving/