The complicated history of Thanksgiving

And how to celebrate with craft chocolate!

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Thanksgiving is an amazing North American holiday. It’s a celebration of gratitude, family, and community that more and more of us globally enjoy.

Thanksgiving also has a pretty complicated history. It’s celebrated in the US now on the fourth Thursday in November, but a month earlier in Canada. And at one point England also had “Thanksgiving” celebrations.

It’s also now – unfortunately – increasingly commercialised with the likes of Black Friday (named after traffic nightmares in Philadelphia during the late 1960s) and Cyber Monday, which sadly can overshadow the more positive sides of the holiday.

So in an effort to unpick its complex history, and showcase why it’s GREAT to celebrate Thanksgiving with craft chocolate, we’ve tried to unpack a few historical claims and myths.

Historical Origins: Challenging the Traditional Narrative

Contrary to popular belief, the first US Thanksgiving was (almost certainly) not the 1621 Plymouth Rock celebration between Pilgrims and Wampanoag. Many States claim historical precedence – for example:

Virginians argue that on December 4 1619, English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred in Virginia and, as stipulated by their Royal charter, held a religious Thanksgiving service.
In Florida, claims are made for a celebration by Spanish settlers in Saint Augustine, Florida on September 8, 1565, and also for French Huguenot colonists who at Fort Caroline, Florida, set aside a day for Thanksgiving in June 1564 to celebrate their arrival.
Not to be outdone, Texans point to May 1541 when Spanish explorers under Francisco Vásquez de Coronado held a celebration of Thanksgiving near present-day Amarillo, Texas.

Many of these early Thanksgivings were primarily spiritual observances, not festive meals – and hark back to a time when the church played an even larger role in political life. Indeed here in the UK, November the 5th (ie the Gunpowder plot) was for a time celebrated with services of “Thanksgiving” in churches all over the country.

To be diplomatic, Thanksgiving’s evolution also reflects “complex interactions” between colonial settlers and Native American tribes. Put another way, Disney’s Pocahontas is more than a bit of a stretch (did you know that Pocahontas is buried in Gravesend, UK…?). Within a generation of the three day celebration at Plymouth Rock in 1621, the colonists and Wampanoag were at war (known as King Philip’s War). And even today, many Native Americans view Thanksgiving as a day of mourning and even protest.

The Path to a National Holiday

Thanksgiving’s journey to becoming a national holiday also shows how the United States really is the history of many different US States coming together. And it provides intriguing insights into the tensions of state, local and federal governance.

Thanksgiving wasn’t a national holiday until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln declared a national holiday as part of national unification efforts during the Civil War.

… however different US States initially maintained independent thanksgiving dates and it wasn’t until the 1940s that a uniform date (fourth Thursday in November) was universally adopted.

Beyond Commercialization

Sadly for many (especially outside the US) modern Thanksgiving risks being overshadowed by Black Friday, Cyber Monday and a smorgasbord of commercial sales, unmissable deals, etc.

This is a massive shame. Thanksgiving at its core is a celebration of gratitude, community and faith in the future. And we believe that this meshes well with craft chocolate – which is also about sharing, delighting in flavour and thanking farmers and makers for their amazing work.

We’re also sceptical about “once in a lifetime” special deals, offers, etc. that will be omnipresent in the next few weeks for mass produced confectionery (and much else). There may be great prices to be had for ultra processed chocolate over this period. But commoditising chocolate, adding loads of sugar, encouraging scoffing, etc. is NOT good value for you, your family, the farmers, makers or the planet (see here for more on discounting etc.)

So this is a long way of saying, don’t’ expect any “deals” or “special offers” over the Thanksgiving period from us.

Instead, please share and celebrate with your families, friends and colleagues some of the bars and sharing boxes we’ve got – with sweet potatoes from New Zealand, a UK maker’s cinnamon bar and a US staple – Taza’s salted almond.

Sources:

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-black-friday/3285840/

https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2020/11/25/the-true-dark-history-of-thanksgiving/

Books

“The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History” by Dr. Linwood “Little Bear” Custalow and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star” (2007)