Thanksgiving

How America Keeps Adapting the Story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth to Match the Story We Need to Tell

by Peter C. Mancall

The prevailing memory of Plymouth has shifted as Americans have used it as an allegory for their contemporary concerns. Most notably, the harsh religious orthodoxy of Plymouth was converted by the 19th century to stand for religious liberty, a concept the Pilgrims would have found odious. 

Take a Lesson from the Persistence of the Founder of Modern Thanksgiving

by William Lambers

Sarah Josepha Hale pushed Abraham Lincoln to declare a national Thanksgiving holiday as a day to seek healing and unity. Fighting to end hunger is a way to recommit to the spirit of the holiday.

UCLA Historian Carla Pestana Debunks Myths About the Pilgrims and the Plymouth Colony

by James Thornton Harris

Alert Tom Cotton: Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower Compact, and the origins of Thanksgiving are just a few of the things Professor Carla Pestana finds in need of historical revision. 

Tom Cotton Attacks "Revisionist History" of Thanksgiving on Senate Floor

The Arkansas Senator warned that the "politically correct editors" of the New York Times are coming for Thanksgiving. 

The Thanksgiving Myth Gets a Deeper Look This Year

“There was an event that happened in 1621,” Wampanoag historian Linda Coombs said. “But the whole story about what occurred on that first Thanksgiving was a myth created to make white people feel comfortable.” Native activists hope to disrupt the stories of Thanksgiving by questioning public history and by recovering indigenous food practices.

How to Recreate Your Lost Family Recipes, According to Historians and Chefs

Chefs and historians of food cultures are working to build public understanding of the history of immigration and the African diaspora through knowledge of cooking and eating practices.

How to Talk About the Truth and Trump at Thanksgiving

by Ibram X. Kendi

If we are serious about bringing Americans together, the work has to start with our own families.

Thanksgiving is a good time to lose our illusions about U.S. history

by Nick Alexandrov

We misread the past each November, when we consider our country’s earliest phase. We like to think tolerance, a love of liberty and a democratic impulse motivated English colonists. But history tells a different story.

Lincoln – not Pilgrims – responsible for Thanksgiving holiday

by William C. Kashatus

Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.

The Myth of the First Thanksgiving is a Buttress of White Nationalism and Needs to Go

by David J. Silverman

Americans tend to view the Thanksgiving myth as harmless, but it is loaded with fraught ideological meaning.

The Invention of Thanksgiving

Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday.

The History and Mythology of the Mayflower Arrival in 1620

by Martyn Whittock

The true history of the Mayflower's arrival in 1620.

Is Thanksgiving Thanksgiving If We Are No Longer Welcoming Refugees?

by William Lambers

What we’ve lost by being mean.

The Murky Origins of the Annual National Turkey Presentation

by Suzy Evans

So when exactly did presidents begin pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey?

This Makes Us Susceptible to Demagoguery

by Joseph Kelly

How the “we’re the chosen people” narrative makes us susceptible to demagogues.

The Dark and Divisive History of America’s Thanksgiving Hymn

How a beloved song with origins in 16th-century Europe captures both a holiday’s spirit of unity and a country’s legacy of exclusion.

In America, there was a time when even 'Thanksgiving' was a fightin' word

In the run-up to the Civil War, there was strong resistance in the South toward Thanksgiving itself.

Most Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong

High school textbooks are particularly bad about stating absolutes because these materials “teach history” by giving students facts to memorize even when the details may be unclear.

Did Squanto meet Pocahontas in London?

by E. M. Rose

Circumstantial evidence suggests that they met when they were staying only a few hundred yards down the street from each other in the homes of men with interlocking business interests.

Thanksgiving: Early Colonists Ate Turkey... But Also Horses, Rats And Snakes, Archaeologists Say

Archaeologists at Historic Jamestowne are working to establish the diet of the colonists who once lived there.