The Tradition of Thanksgiving

Just as October is prized for Halloween and December for its winter holidays, November is prized for Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, students are thankful for three days off and no homework. Thanksgiving Day, always on the fourth Thursday of November, is a day of family reunions, friends gathering, thankfulness, cooking, and, of course, food.

Thanksgiving began in 1621 after a successful harvest when the Plymouth colonists invited the Wampanoag tribe to a feast at their harvest festival, not originally known as Thanksgiving. It lasted multiple days, and similar to a potluck, both groups brought food such as wildfowl, venison, corn porridge or bread, beans, and pumpkins, nothing similar to our turkey, cranberry sauce, and apple pie that we eat today. Although this “first Thanksgiving” is often simplified, it had a much larger and complicated colonist history than can be described. In 1863, during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday of November, changed to the fourth Thursday of November in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Similar to the first Thanksgiving harvest festival, OHS students gather all over the country, as well as in other continents, a day to simply be grateful. Students say that they are excited to be “hanging out with friends,” no doubt feasting, “hoping to eat turkey, mashed potatoes,” and so much more food. As the name states, however, we must be thankful, maybe for computers that allow us to be able to attend OHS, maybe for “friends, family,” and maybe, simply life.