Happy Thanksgiving! I wish everyone here a Happy Thanksgiving | The Catloaf Channel

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish everyone here a Happy Thanksgiving, and hope you all had the opportunity to spend time with family and friends!

I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the history of Thanksgiving; contrary to popular myth, Thanksgiving didn't start in North America, but actually began in Protestant England.

Days of Thanksgiving were religious services formulated during the English reformation (~ᴬᴰ1530) in the reign of Henry VIII and were reactionary to the very large number of religious holidays on the Catholic calendar; as a way to make a significant reduction in services (from 95 to 27), focusing on a single major day, to give thanks to the Lord. This day of Thanksgiving had no fixed dated, and was declared by the Church of England when it would occur.

An English religious separatist group known as Puritans however took that a step further, to Thanksgiving being the only religious observance throughout the year. They separated from the Church of England for the belief the Church was a pawn of the Papacy.

The Puritans were heavily persecuted by the English Crown/ Church, which drove a significant portion of them to settle in Leiden Netherlands. However the English authorities were still able to persecute them.

Coupled with the persecution, were the fears the Puritans were losing their ethno-religious identity, becoming Dutch, through local marriages. For these reasons, the Puritans built the Mayflower and set sail from the Netherlands to North America, to build their own independent civilization.

This is where myth sets in:
Over the first year, of the 102 original settlers in ᴬᴰ1620, only 53 survived the winter until the first Thanksgiving in ᴬᴰ1621.
To survive, the Pilgrims hunted and raided food reserves of the Ameridans until they were able to establish suitable farming grounds in the colony. The food raids were little trouble for the pilgrims who were heavily armed with firearms.
They were not helped nor taught by the Ameridans on how to survive nor farm.

The first Thanksgiving in ᴬᴰ1621 was to commemorate and celebrate the successful establishment of their colony and their victory over the indigenous in many bloody battles; with the first harvest of their hard worked crops.
The Ameridans weren't invited, however 90 Wampanoag warriors were present, as they were sent to the colony to exterminate the pilgrims; the battle of which was deterred when Pilgrims fired their firearms into the air to frighten them.

Later Thanksgivings were infrequent, usually only occuring after major battle victories over the indigenous, such as the Pequot War (ᴬᴰ1630s) to celebrate "the bloody victory, giving thanks to God that the battle had been won;" until George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide Thanksgiving in Nov 26, ᴬᴰ1789 "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God". From ᴬᴰ1789 it was an annual event, with the date varying from state to state; until ᴬᴰ1863 where the date would be fixed across the nation.

Today Thanksgiving is still heavily celebrated in both the United States and Leiden, Netherlands; a mark left by the Puritans.
From the beginning until now, Thanksgiving always was, and is a day of giving thanks to the Lord for what we have, in the company of friends and family; against the authorities who wish to persecute us, and the dark-hordes who wish to replace us.