Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607,[13] with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610.[10] In 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred. The group's charter required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."[14] Three years later, after the Indian massacre of 1622, the Berkeley Hundred site and other outlying locations were abandoned.
Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them. Squanto had learned the English language during his enslavement in England. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit had given food to the colonists during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.
National Thanksgiving Proclamation
The Continental-Confederation Congress, the legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, issued several "national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving",[29] a practice that was continued by Presidents Washington and Adams under the Constitution, and has manifested itself in the established American observances of Thanksgiving and the National Day of Prayer today.[30] This proclamation was published in The Independent Gazetteer; or, the Chronicle of Freedom on November 5, 1782, the first being observed on November 28, 1782.U.S. tradition compares the holiday with a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Plantation. It is continued in modern times with the Thanksgiving dinner, traditionally featuring turkey, playing a central role in the celebration of Thanksgiving.
In the United States, certain kinds of food are traditionally served at Thanksgiving meals. Turkey, usually roasted and stuffed (but sometimes deep-fried instead), is typically the featured item on any Thanksgiving feast table, so much so that Thanksgiving is colloquially known as "Turkey Day." In fact, 45 million turkeys were consumed on Thanksgiving Day alone in 2015. With 85 percent of Americans partaking in the meal, that’s an estimated 276 million Americans dining on the festive poultry, spending an expected $1.05 billion on turkeys for Thanksgiving in 2016.[44] [45]Mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet corn, various fall vegetables, squash, and pumpkin pie are commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner. Green bean casserole was introduced in 1955 and remains a favorite. All of these are actually native to the Americas or were introduced as a new food source to the Europeans when they arrived. Turkey may be an exception. In his book Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick suggests that the Pilgrims might already have been familiar with turkey in England, even though the bird is native to the Americas. The Spaniards had brought domesticated turkeys back from Central America in the early 17th century, and the birds soon became popular fare all over Europe, including England, where turkey (as an alternative to the traditional goose) became a "fixture at English Christmases".[46] The Pilgrims did not observe Christmas.[47]
As a result of the size of Thanksgiving dinner, Americans eat more food on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year
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