A feast to celebrate the harvest has been a part of
man's history throughout recorded time.
The Chinese were said to have celebrated such a feast thousands of years ago.
The Feast of the Tabernacles (Sukkot) a Jewish celebration, also a harvest
rite and lasts eight days. It is so named because the celebrants build booths
and tents during the festival in memory of the years when the Jews didn't have
homeland.
The ancient Greek harvest festival was called Thesmophora and celebrated
Demeter, the founder of agriculture and the goddess of the harvest. It was
celebrated in Athens in November, by married women only. The symbols of
Demeter were poppies and ears of corn, a basket of fruit and a young pig.
The Cerelia was a festival which occurred each year on October 4. Named after
the Roman goddess of the harvest, Ceres, this feast was celebrated by fasting
and offering a cow and the first cuttings of the harvest as a sacrifice to the gods.
In England, the autumnal feast was called the Harvest
Home and was derived from the Druidical harvest feast. This festival began
with a special service in the village church, which had been decorated with
fruit and flowers for the occasion, was followed by a large communal
dinner.
In the United States, the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in the
year 1621. The Pilgrims, who had come to the New World from England landed
at Plymouth Rock, in what is now Massachusetts, on December 26, 1620, after
being at sea for almost a year.
When the Pilgrims settled in the new
world they discovered that the grain they brought from England wouldn't grow
in the soil of their new home. The first winter was very hard for the early
settlers, and many people died from sickness or starvation. The native
Indians came to the aid of the Pilgrims and taught them how to plant crops
of corn. They also taught the Pilgrims how to hunt and fish.
As a result of the help that the
Indians gave to the settlers, the crops planted in 1621 did well and
there was a great harvest in the fall. The Pilgrims decided to have a feast, as a way
of giving thanks. The Pilgrims invited their friends, the Indians, to share
this first Thanksgiving feast which lasted three days.
Thanksgiving was proclaimed a national
holiday by Congress in 1941.
