It’s widely accepted that Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock marked the unofficial founding of America and celebrated its first Thanksgiving in October 1621, after their initial harvest in the New World. The only problem is that’s wrong… in at least two major ways.
In reality, the settlers (pilgrims themselves) of what became the Commonwealth of Virginia celebrated Thanksgiving in 1607. Jamestown, its first permanent settlement, held Thanksgiving as early as 1610.
Thanksgiving originated as a harvest festival and Americans have celebrated it nationally on and off since 1789, after Congress requested that President George Washington make such a proclamation. Americans have celebrated it as a federal holiday every year since 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens." (No, they don’t writeth liketh that anymore!)
In researching this, one aspect of the story that strikes me is the gratitude of the people at these milestones of Thanksgiving history when the going had gotten tough! Both groups of Pilgrims/pilgrims (that covers both proper and generic names) faced diseases they’d never encountered, occasionally hostile neighbors, and an array of other gnarly circumstances Welcome Wagon would’ve frowned uponeth. Washington’s proclamation took place after the new nation improved its government and not long after an eight-year war with its fatherland. Lincoln’s proclamation was near the end of the grueling, bloody four-year Civil War.
You can guess my point about people in dire circumstances expressing gratitude, contrasted with people in relative luxury being ungrateful. However, I might make that point in a way you don’t expect...
Johnny Carson once told a joke on the “Tonight” show about a grandmother who takes her toddler grandson to the ocean. As he plays on the beach, the tide rolls in and takes him away, as it rolls back out. The grandmother prays fervently that if God brings her grandson back unharmed, she’ll never ask for anything again. Two minutes later, a wave coughs the boy back on the beach. She hugs him, incessantly praising God for this great blessing! After finally settling down, she more closely examines her restored grandson… Then, she looks up at the heavens and says, “… He had a hat!”