Early Thanksgiving Days

Early Thanksgiving Days

BY LEE A. SNOW

Though Thanksgiving ranks with the Fourth of July as an American institution, it touches a deeper chord in our feelings with its nearly three hundred years of historic associations. It combines the religious, social and festal enjoyments, and fills a very unique place in our social and national life.

Our thanksgiving idea was no doubt borrowed from peoples of long ago. We have many instances in the Bible of people of- fering prayer, praise and gratitude to God for his mercies and blessings. In mythological times it was the custom to offer sacri- fice after great successes in battle. The goddess, "Ceres," the pro- tectress of agriculture, received homage after an abundant har- vest. This custom passed down through the centuries taking vari- ous forms among the several races. In England it took the form of the harvest festival, and was perhaps the suggestion followed by our Plymouth fathers.

The first "Thanksgivings" offered upon American soil were by the Newfoundland colony, 1578; by the Popham colony, 1601, and by the Pilgrims, December 20, 1620, while still on ship, "for safe deliverance from the perils of the sea, for the goodly land awaiting them, and for the birth of a son, December 19, to one Susannah White." These exercises were short prayer meetings. It remained for Governor Bradford, in 1621, to call the first full Thanksgiving day on American soil.

During the season of 1621, the Plymouth fathers planted twenty acres to crops of corn, barley and peas. The corn matured but the six acres of barley and peas were hardly worth gathering ; yet they were grateful for all that they did receive, and for the peace they enjoyed with their neighbors, the Indians. To the feast appointed by their governor, they invited Massasoit and ninety of his braves, who brought with them haunches of venison and oysters, both new to the colonists. The men returned from the hunt with ducks and wild turkey, and from this the turkey has grown to be our "Thanksgiving bird."

By 1623, more than half their number had perished from hunger, and exposure, while those who survived were reduced to a ration of five kernels of corn to the person per day. The drouth of this same year now threatened their crops and the colony's existence. On July 16, a fast was ordered, and for nine hours they continued to call upon their God for deliverance. Before the meeting closed, the showers began to fall, and for fourteen days

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mother earth drank her fill. "It would be hard for us, at this day, to say whether their withered crops or their drooping spirits were most quickened."

In the Bay colony (Boston), 1629 to 1630, there was a short- age of food. The more prosperous divided with the hungry until the supply was exhausted and their existence threatened. February 5 was designated as a day of fasting and prayer to Almighty God, but fortunately a ship arrived on the 4th, bring- ing fresh supplies and new hopes. They were too busy to meet on the 5th, but on the 22nd of the same month, they gathered at the meeting house and gave solemn thanks to God for his de- liverance.

Days of Thanksgiving were common among the several col- onies, the Plymouth colony again ordering a celebration Decem- ber 22, 1636.

Autumn being the storehouse of nature, it was invariably chosen as a time for Thanksgiving, and in colonial days Thanks- giving was considered as sacred as the Sabbath, for it is recorded that one "William Vesey is bound over for plowing on the day of Thanksgiving."

During Revolutionary days, the Continental Congress cele- brated Thanksgiving on July 20, 1775, May 17, 1776, January 29, 1777, and among the Continental Army, December 21, 1777, inasmuch "as God hath been pleased to smile upon us in the prose- cution of our just and necessary war for the defense and establish- ment of our inalienable rights and liberties."

It was Washington, in 1789, who first designated the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving day. This date was sanctioned by Congress. In that year Mrs. Washington enter- tained in commemoration of that memorable feast, at Plymouth, 168 years before.

The next important Thanksgiving was ordered by President Lincoln to be celebrated on August 6, 1863, "as a day for national thanksgiving, praise and prayer, because it had pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the army and navy of the United States, on land and sea, victories so signal and effective as to fur- nish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence that the Union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently secured."

In the same year, President Jefferson Davis, of the Confed- erate States, appointed August 21 "to be observed as a day of fast- ing and prayer on account of the reverses the Confederate cause had sustained." Their former successses on the sea and on land had made them self-confident and forgetful of their reliance upon God. The love of lucre had eaten like gangrene into the very heart of

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the land, and therefore they should "receive in humble thankful- ness the lesson which he has taught in our recent reverses."

It must be remembered that Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and other "reverses," twenty in all, in as many days, had befallen the Con- federate cause.

Today we can truly thank God for peace and prosperity and for his loving kindness and mercy unto us as individuals and as a nation.

ST. GEORGE, UTAH

Elder Marion P. Hutchings, president of the East Tennessee Con- ference, reports that the work of the Lord has never looked more en- couraging than in that place at present. "The counties and towns in the past who have been bitterly opposed to us are now receiving the elders. The churches and school houses are being opened up for our

THE LARSEN CHURCH, TENN.

use all through the conference and the people seem to be much more anxious to hear the glorious truths of 'Mormonism.' On July 24th six of the elders met with the Saints and friends at Larsen, where we have a beautiful little church and about fifty members. This was the first entertainment of the kind ever held in this section of country. The elders laboring here are: James L. Marler, Lewiston, Idaho; George A. Sampson, Delta, Utah; Charles R. Bennett, Holbrook, Idaho; Conference President Marion P. Hutchings, Beaver, Utah; Orson M. Sprague, Mesquite, Nevada; Earl B. Hales, Riverside, Utah."