My mother's biggest holiday of the year has always been Thanksgiving. She plans and works for weeks, not only on the turkey dinner with its endless side dishes, but also on the numerous other meals that take place during an extended five-day eating marathon.
As it turns out, the tradition of celebrating bountiful harvests started long before the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower. The ancient Greeks honored their goddess of the harvest, Demeter, each fall with the festival of Thesmosphoria - a three-day fete where married women, who personified fertility, would build leafy shelters and furnish them with couches made of greenery. They then fasted on the second day, and, on the third day, sought Demeter's blessings for another good harvest with offerings of seed corn, cakes, fruits and pigs. The Romans, building on the traditions of the Greeks, held a similar annual festival on October 4 to honor their harvest goddess, Ceres. Called Cerelia, the celebration included music, parades, games and - of course - a Thanksgiving feast.
The Greeks and Romans may have adopted their harvest traditions from the ancient Hebrews, who observed Sukkoth each autumn. In a 3,000-year-old tradition still practiced today, the Jews built temporary huts, or succots, similar to those constructed by Moses and the Israelites as they wandered the desert for forty years before being allowed to enter the Promised Land. Jews honor the eight-day festival (which begins five days after Yom Kippur) by spending the first two nights eating outside in their succots, which are hung with fruits and vegetables.
Thanksgiving was celebrated by the ancient Egyptians in the spring, their harvest season, with a festival in honor of Min, the god of vegetation and fertility. When Egyptian farmers harvested their corn, they pretended to be grief-stricken. They believed their tears would deceive the spirits that lived in the corn and prevent them from becoming angry when the corn was cut down.
After surviving a devastating winter that killed forty-six of the original 102 passengers who sailed on the Mayflower, the remaining colonists - along with ninety-one Indians who had helped them survive the winter - celebrated a successful spring harvest with a three-day feast in June of 1621. The Pilgrims, who happened to call all wild fowl "turkey," dug into wild ducks and geese, as well as venison, clams, lobster and fish. They were probably not enjoying the real gobblers' drumsticks, since, with a surprising speed coupled with excellent hearing and vision, wild turkeys would have been nearly impossible for the colonists to catch with the weapons available to them.
The Pilgrims were also probably not garnishing their main dishes with cranberries, since the Indians used them not for dinner, but for dying fabric and decorating pottery. In addition, they probably had to forgo pumpkin pie since they had run out of wheat flour in their first few months and had no dairy products. The pumpkin they ate was boiled, and they produced a fried bread from their corn crop. The rest of the feast was supplemented with watercress, berries, dried fruit and plums.
"Thanksgiving" was not repeated until 1676, when the governing council of Charlestown, Mass., proclaimed June 29 as a day of celebration for seeing their community securely established. "The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced."
November 1777 marked the first time all thirteen colonies joined in the celebration, but it was a one-time event to mark the victory over the British at Saratoga. George Washington tried to institute a national day of Thanksgiving in 1789, but didn't receive any support. Thomas Jefferson was said to have scoffed at the idea of "Thanksgiving" and said it was "the most ridiculous concept I've ever heard."
It wasn't until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln established the last Thursday of November as the official national day of Thanksgiving. In the true spirit of the holidays, Franklin Roosevelt later tried to move the date up a week to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Public dissent forced him to move it back to the original date two years later.
So as you sit down with your own bird, think about the centuries of harvest traditions that have preceded your own celebration, from the ancient Egyptians' corn to the Pilgrims' and Indians' maize to the Green Giant creamed version of today. Please pass the drum sticks.
(A. Laban)
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.