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Opinion | True Thanksgiving history not common knowledge

Robert Hanes, hanesrv@miamioh.edu

As the air starts to chill and the leaves start to change color, everyone knows that Fall is here, denoting the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving. For universities around the United States this means that the students are given a much-needed break before finals. For almost everyone, it means eating turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy with their families. All of these things are great but, why do we celebrate Thanksgiving and where did the Holiday come from in the first place?

Movies, social media and grade school teach us as children that Thanksgiving was a time when the Native American's and Pilgrims came together to celebrate. The Pilgrims had just come to America and their first winter had been a rough one. Then the next year, thanks to some of the natives of that area, the Pilgrims had a good harvest. They decided to sit down after the harvest with the Native friends, have a feast and thank God for the good harvest.

Some people like James W. Baker believed this was the start of Thanksgiving. According to the official Plymouth Plantation website, "despite disagreements over the details, the three-day event in Plymouth in the fall of 1621 was "the historical birth of the American Thanksgiving holiday," Baker said.

They believe although this began as only a tradition in the New England area for over 100 years, it was the day Thanksgiving started.

There are others, however, who disagree with this. They say that those events happened but that because it was not repeated for the next few years, it was not the start of the national holiday. Many believe that the holiday was actually started during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

Sarah Josepha Hale, an editorial writer for the "Boston Ladies' Magazine," was supposedly the person who helped make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

According to the website Wilstar, "after a 40-year campaign of writing editorials and letters to governors and presidents, Hale's obsession became a reality when, in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving."

To many, this shows that 1863 was really the time when Thanksgiving became the holiday we all know today.

Both of these opinions are correct in some way. The tradition of Thanksgiving was started with the Pilgrims in 1621. The feast they had with their Indian friends thanking God for the harvest is an event that is still passed down, even today.

The problem with this is it set up the tradition, not the national holiday. It became the national holiday we know of today in 1863 when Hale pushed for it and Lincoln made it official. Whether one believes that 1621 is the date or 1863 is up to them. What is important is that this now equates to a time when people enjoy a meal with their families and students give their brains a rest before heading back for finals.


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