In early American history, Thanksgiving was not a federal holiday. It was a day assigned by Congress, the President, or the state legislature. Congress sometimes selected multiple “thanksgiving” days to celebrate throughout the year. The holiday was not about turkey and stuffing but was a day of prayer and sometimes incorporated fasting, religious worship, and confession of sin.
If you ask most Americans today, they associate the holiday with a Thursday in November, and it usually includes a large family meal, a football game and a day off from work or school.
“My favorite part of the holiday is spending time with family and friends,” said sophomore Luke Garfin.
Most Americans no longer attend church on Thanksgiving or confess their sins as the holiday has become more secular. Thanksgiving customs have evolved over time and reflect the changes in modern culture. The way people celebrate Thanksgiving today would be unrecognizable to the likes of George Washington, John Hancock, or James Madison, each of whom proclaimed thanksgiving holidays in colonial times.
“I always enjoy comparing the celebrations involved in our interpretation of the holiday today to that of my mother’s stories from her childhood,” was my neighbor, Dave Simon’s takeaway, during our conversation on the subject.
Many people believe that Thanksgiving has lost its true meaning. If the real meaning of Thanksgiving is to show gratitude for what we have, then it still retains some of its meaning even if the way it is celebrated has changed significantly over time. Those who celebrate Thanksgiving today in America usually express gratitude for their families, meals and, in more rural places, for the recent year’s harvest.
“I’m thankful for the privilege I have around me, and it’s important to recognize what we’re grateful for,” said sophomore Jake Leber.
Furthermore, studies show that being grateful for what you have is a great way to increase your overall happiness. According to a study performed by Dr. Martin Seligman, a proponent of positive psychology, practicing gratitude for one week resulted in 92% of people feeling happier. In other studies, 90% of people found that expressing gratitude made them more joyful, 84% said it reduced stress, and 78% said it gave them more energy.
The direct and positive relationship between gratitude and happiness may explain why Thanksgiving is one of the most widely celebrated holidays with 80 to 90% of Americans participating regardless of religious or ethnic background. New traditions have emerged, such as “Friendsgiving” (celebrating the holiday with friends), participating in “Turkey Trot” runs, and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. After all, we no longer consider oysters an essential Thanksgiving food or turtle soup, which was a popular Thanksgiving dish from colonial times until the early 1900s.
In President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Thanksgiving proclamation, he recommended that people should be relieved of their work and focus on being thankful for blessings they have received in the past and will receive in the future. While it does sound very similar to the meaning we ascribe to Thanksgiving today, Roosevelt also focused heavily on the religious side of things, a major break from what we have today.
While whether or not to practice the holiday in a religious sense should remain up to individuals, it is important that the sentiment of being grateful remains a staple in modern day Thanksgiving. Ultimately, it’s the namesake of the holiday, and we certainly have much to be grateful for in our lives.