Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Thanksgiving is a writer’s favorite holiday because it doesn’t involve gifts. Let’s face it, if you’re a writer but your name ain’t Stephen King or Jodi Picoult, you’re on a pretty thin budget. But that’s OK, so long as you’re surrounded by friends and family, and good food.

The pic above is a flock of turkeys in my backyard a couple months ago. No, none of them is currently on our table.

By now you should know the whole Pilgrims-and-Wampanoag Indians-feasting-together-in-1621 thing is a myth, or at least a bit contrived. There actually was a feast vaguely in the late fall of 1621 in Plymouth Colony, and it seems Massasoit and some local Wampanoag did show up — but we don’t know why (i.e., was it a planned visit or just a chance meeting?). Edward Winslow, one of the Mayflower travelers to survive the brutal winter of 1620, wrote about the meal in passing in a letter to a friend back in England. He describes a menu which included corn, barley, peas, fowl (ducks or geese, or possibly, yes, turkey), clams, and Massasoit sent his warriors hunting which added venison to the meal. But Winslow seems to be describing simply a plentiful meal rather than some big celebration. We just don’t know.

The Thanksgiving holiday really stems from the brutal American Civil War. By 1863 the losses were piling up and Lincoln had enacted the extremely unpopular mandatory army conscription campaign that summer — the first ever in the country’s history. Everyone thought the war would end in a couple months back in 1861 but that’s not what happened, and despite the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July, 1863 the country was weary. About 20 years before, a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale was horrified by the Indian Wars then beginning to unfold as the country expanded westward (the 1830 Indian Removal Act had banned any Indians living east of the Mississippi River, leading to the Cherokee Trail of Tears). Having done some research and discovered Winslow’s letters (which were not widely known at the time), Sarah wrote a fanciful magazine article portraying the meal described in Winslow’s letters as a big, joint Pilgrim-Wampanoag celebration of life, trying to emphasize mutual respect and coexistence. (And oddly, that mutual respect and coexistence may have been real in 1621, but it would not last. The arrival of the John Winthrop Puritans in 1630 completely changed the population dynamics of New England in the Pilgrims’ favor, leading to wars beginning in 1637 that would explode into an open, all-or-nothing war of extermination in 1675. But there was a brief period in the 1620s of relative peace…)

Lincoln apparently had read Sarah’s piece and used it to invoke in 1863 a mythical past that was both religious — declaring a day of thanksgiving, which involved fasting and prayer — followed by a feast that brought the entire family together. For Lincoln, the declaration of Thanksgiving was both an earnest time to acknowledge the Nation’s sacrifices in the Civil War while also bringing families together at a time when so many men were not home, off at the front. For Lincoln, it was a one-time declaration but Americans liked it and continued the tradition long after the war. And one way or another via migrants, it also made its way to Canada so that by the 1870s it was a popular holiday there as well. (Today, Canada celebrates Thanksgiving a month before the United States. It should be noted that for its inspiration, Canada looks to English explorer/pirate/etc. Martin Frobisher who landed on Labrador in Canada in 1576, barely alive, and declared days of thanksgiving for having survived. He went on to explore the Canadian Arctic looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, and has a bay named after him nowadays on southern Baffin Island for his efforts. )

The holiday was celebrated by Americans vaguely in the fall for decades afterward. It only became an official Federal holiday under President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, when he was faced with similar circumstances as Lincoln — millions of Americans off fighting an ugly war. He was the one who chose the last Thursday in November each year for the holiday.

What does this mean to us today? Meh, most holidays actually have vague origins like this. Don’t be put off by the myths. Sometimes (I think) it’s OK to take them at face value. We don’t know what the Pilgrims and Native Americans who participated in that meal in 1621 were really doing or thinking but ya know, what’s wrong with celebrating some kindness, community gathering, and mutual respect now? Why not? Lord knows we could use more of these values nowadays.

So stuff yourself silly with a good dinner, watch the Cowboys lose on TV, then tell jokes and old stories with family and friends as you have your 3rd helping of ice cream later, on the couch. For today, it’s all good.

But just remember when you finally wake from your carb coma in the EZ Boy chair later, to get off your butt and do some writing. You’re a writer, dammit.

Happy Thanksgiving!