By Alex Costello
"Wow!" they say. "This place is great. Sure wish we had some food, though."
Enter the Native Americans, carrying a steaming turkey on a silver platter, along with mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams with little marshmallows in them, corn, a green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. They all sat down together to eat, and the Pilgrims were thankful, because now they wouldn't starve to death.
At least, that's the romanticized, kindergarten class version.
"People had been getting together in Europe and the world over at harvest time in late September to mid November," said Lisa Overholser, a Folklorist from the New York Folklore Society, "and the way it became a holiday was by presidential decree."
Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, during the Civil War.
"Since the nation had grown out of these early colonies, he saw in the story of that Pilgrim/Indian survival episode, mythologized it, something that unified the people of the United States," said Philip Nicholson, a professor of history at Nassau Community College. "So he set this holiday as the last Thursday before the last Friday in November."
While the traditions of Thanksgiving may not have arisen directly from the Pilgrims' encounter with Native Americans, the spirit of the holiday did. When Henry Hudson was exploring what is now the Hudson River, he stopped for a short while in what is now the Coney Island area. There, he encountered Native Americans, who were very friendly to him.
"He wrote in his journal that the Native Americans came out and shared food with them," Nicholson said. "This was in 1609, ten years before the Pilgrims, and he enjoyed a little bit of a Thanksgiving feast with roasted clams that were thrown on a fire by Indians on his arrival."
And it's also possible that the Pilgrims and Native Americans enjoyed turkey, as well. "Wild turkeys were pretty commonplace, and still are, in parts of New England," said Nicholson. "That was the kind of game that Pilgrims and early Americans enjoyed." As to whether or not that is what they actually ate, though, no one knows for certain.
And some other Thanksgiving traditions, like Black Friday and Thanksgiving being the start of the Holiday season, are much more modern inventions. "I don't think anybody ever saw jellied cranberry sauce until sometime when canning became fashionable, in the post-Civil War era," Nicholson said.
Thanksgiving is steeped in tradition, and it's the one secular American holiday that isn't militaristic. And while turkey may be common on nearly every table in the United States this Nov. 27, what surrounds it will vary from place to place.
"[What's eaten] varies, in some parts of the country, like on the west coast - they even have seafood at their Thanksgiving dinner because that is what's there," said Overholser. "You sort of adapt to what is available in your community."
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