THANKSGIVING DAY
Pagan Harvest Festival

From the propaganda of public schools every American thinks he knows how Thanksgiving originated; in 1620 the small band of pilgrims of Plymouth Colony braved the perilous North Atlantic in quest of religious freedom. They landed in November and faced winter with meager supplies of food that dwindled rapidly. Because the summer was blessed with rain and the autumn harvest was plentiful, the pilgrim colony, appropriately grateful, established a day of thanksgiving and invited the local Indians to share their bounty. Supposedly, this is the origin of the holiday known as Thanksgiving and it is so pure and holy that everyone can now observe this Thanksgiving day with a clear conscience, knowing that this is pleasing to Yahweh.

The truth is rather different. The Plymouth Colony was not the first English Colony to land on American shores, nor were they the first to offer thanks. The first Thanksgiving day service in what was to become the United States was the one held on August 9, 1607, by colonists en route to found the short-lived Popham Colony at what is now Phippsburg, Maine.

The first permanent English settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, on the James River in Virginia, also in 1607. As early as December 4, 1619, the settlers set aside a day to give thanks for the survival of their small company. Their day of thanks continued to be observed on December 4 until 1622, when a conflict with Indians almost devastated the colony. [The American Book of Days, by Jane M. Hatch, 1978, pages 1053-1054.]

The official historical pilgrim Thanksgiving day was not even a day completely given to thanks and praise, as the pilgrims were accustomed to doing. This day was primarily a show of military power for the Indians.

Thanksgiving, An American Holiday, An American History, by Diana Karter Applebaum, pages 7-11, tells us the true story of the pilgrims' feast in the fall of 1621.

Landing at Plymouth in December 1620, the Pilgrims faced winter without an adequate food supply, sheltered from the elements only by such dwellings as they could build quickly...
  The first autumn, an ample harvest insured that the colony would have food for the winter months. Governor Bradford, with one eye on the divine Providence, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving to God, and with the other eye on the local political situation, extended an invitation to neighboring Indians to share in the harvest feast. In order to guarantee that the feast served to cement a peaceful relationship, the three-day long meal was punctuated by displays of the power of English muskets for the benefit of suitably impressed Indian guests.
  This "first Thanksgiving'' was a feast called to suit the needs of the hour, which were to celebrate the harvest, thank the Lord for His goodness, and regale and impress the Indians. We have Edward Winslow's testimony that the feast was a success:
  Thanksgivings were holy days of solemn prayer in the Puritan lexicon, days akin to sabbaths and feast days on which "Recreations'' and "exercising of Armes'' would not have been countenanced. Had the governor proclaimed a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God, Edward Winslow, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, would have written about the religious services the settlers held. Thus this feast was more harvest celebration than prayerful day of thanksgiving.
  Preparing a feast for 90 Indians and 50 settlers must have taxed the strength of the four Englishwomen and two teenage girls on hand to do the cooking... They worked with the resources at hand, and, although they successfully fed the hungry men, the feast bore little resemblance to the modern Thanksgiving dinner...
 ...Oysters, clams and fish rounded out the abundant, but far from epicurean, feast that the celebrators would have been more likely to call a "harvest home" than a "thanksgiving" celebration.

However satisfying it would be to point to a particular day and say, "This was the first Thanksgiving,'' it definitely would not be the truth. This American holiday gradually grew up in the culture of Puritan New England, an origin more complex than the legend the public schools have nurtured for generations.

The Harvest Home

The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1980, Volume 5, tells of harvest home:
Harvest Home, also called Ingathering, traditional English harvest festival, celebrated from antiquity and surviving to modern times in isolated regions. Participants celebrate the last day of harvest by singing, shouting, and decorating the village with boughs.

Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, by John Brand, George Bell and Sons, pages 16-33 gives a complete description of harvest home. A few excerpts are displayed here:
HARVEST HOME
Macrobius tells us that, among the Heathens, the heads of families, when they had got in their harvest, were wont to feast with their servants who had laboured for them in tilling the ground.
  The respect shown to servants at this season seems to have sprung from a grateful sense of their services. Everything depends at this juncture on their labour and despatch. Vacina (or Vacuna), among the ancients, was the name of the goddess to whom rustics sacrificed at the conclusion of harvest.
  Moresin tells us the popery, in imitation of this, brings home her chaplets of corn, which she suspends on poles; that offerings are made on the altars of her tutelar gods, while thanks are returned for the collected stores, and prayers are made for future ease and rest.
  In a Journey into England, by Paul Hentzner, in the year 1598, ed. 1757, p.79, speaking of Windsor, he says: "As we were returning to our inn, we met some country people celebrating their Harvest Home; their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed, by which perhaps they would signify Ceres"...
  Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, ii. ad finem, 17, says, `I have seen in some places, an image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn placed under her arm, and a scycle in her hand, carried out of the village in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with music and much clamour of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day, and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they call the Harvest Queen, and it represents the Roman Ceres.'

The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, London, England, pages 108-109, tells us of harvest home and the harvest queen.

Harvest home, harvest-home.
1. The fact, occasion, or time of bringing home the last of the harvest; the close of the harvesting.
b. A shout or song of rejoicing on that occasion.
2. The festival or merry-making to celebrate the successful homing of the corn, called in Scotland 'the kirn'. (Now rarely held.)

Harvest queen. A name given a. to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and crops; b. to a young woman chosen from the reapers (or an image or doll dressed up, cf. harvest-doll), to whom was given a post of honour at the harvest-home.

Thanksgiving, An American Holiday, An American History, Applebaum, pages 19-29, tells us the truth about the ancestors of this holiday.

...it was in the towns of the Connecticut River valley and the farming villages of Plymouth Colony that the holiday as we know it evolved. Neither created intentionally nor copied from a paradigmatic "first Thanksgiving,'' the new celebration was a synthesis of four distinct and ancient traditions, elements of which united in the unique cultural milieu of Puritan New England to give birth to Thanksgiving. The newborn Thanksgiving holiday had a Puritan "mother'' from Connecticut, a Pilgrim "father'' from Plymouth and, for "grandparents,'' four traditions from the Old World.

Harvest Home
New Englanders came from Old England, where the Harvest Home_one of the "grandparents'' of Thanksgiving_was celebrated. The Harvest Home was a holiday on which the villagers joined together to bring together the last loads of grain from the fields and share a merry feast when the work was done. English villages followed local harvest customs; some dressed a maiden in white to ride atop a loaded cart as "Queen of the Harvest.'' Others fashioned a figure from the grain itself to be robed in a white gown and set in the center of a circle of rejoicing farmers. There was sufficient taint of idol worship and evidence of licentious behavior in the old English Harvest Home for Puritans to reject the custom summarily. They recoiled from these remnants of the pagan customs that predated Christianity in England, but memories of the harvest feast lingered all the same.

Christmas
Like the Harvest Home, Christmas_another of the old-world "grandparents'' of Thanksgiving_was remembered but not celebrated by the Puritans. The practice of designating the day of Jesus' birth, and especially of making merry on that day, were viewed as one of the grave errors of the churches of both Rome and England and as a departure from the purity of the early church.
  The spirit of Christmas, however, was sorely missed, and during the 1600s, when Thanksgiving was becoming a popular festival, small pieces of the English Christmas crept into the celebration of the Yankee Thanksgiving. Those quintessential English Christmas dishes, plum pudding and mince pie, became as indispensable a part of the Thanksgiving menu as turkey and pumpkin pie itself.

Civil Proclamations
Thanksgiving Day, our unique American holiday, ought not to be confused with still a third "grandparent,'' the special days of thanksgiving proclaimed by civil authorities in Europe and throughout the American colonies. When some stroke of extraordinary good fortune befell a nation, the civil authorities often declared a day of thanksgiving and prayer, marked by special services in every church.

Religious Proclamations
Fourth "grandparent" to the American Thanksgiving Day was the tradition of individual Puritan congregations declaring days of thanksgiving and prayer.

Synthesis of the Traditions
The Thanksgiving holiday born in Puritan New England in the 1630's and 1640's was shaped by four traditions__the Harvest Home, Christmas, proclamations of civic thanksgiving and congregational days of thanksgiving and prayer.

Connecticut made Thanksgiving day an annual festival for the ordinary blessings of the year and for the fruits of the earth, a new holiday was born which was based upon ancient practices. The American Book of Days, by Jane M. Hatch, page 1053, tells us:
Although Thanksgiving is one of the most popular holidays in the United States, the idea of setting aside a day to express gratitude for good fortune did not originate in this country. In ancient times many peoples held special festivals in the autumn to give thanks for bountiful harvests. The Greeks honored Demeter, their goddess of agriculture, with a nine-day celebration, and in a similar fashion the Romans paid tribute to Ceres (identified with Demeter). After the crops had been gathered, the Anglo-Saxons rejoiced at a "harvest home,'' which featured a hearty feast. In Scotland the harvest celebration was known as a kirn and included special church services and a substantial dinner.
  Thus, since most of the settlers who came to America probably had known some form of thanksgiving day in their homelands, it is not surprising that they transplanted this custom to the New World.

Celebrations: The Comprehensive Book of American Holidays, by Robert J. Myers, pages 271-272, tells us:
The Pilgrims, who in 1621 observed our initial Thanksgiving holiday, were not a people especially enthusiastic about the celebration of festivals. In fact, these austere and religious settlers of America would have been dismayed had they known of the long and popular history of harvest festivals, of which their Thanksgiving was only the latest.
  The harvest festival, with its attendant rites, seems to have spread out from a relatively small area of land, from Egypt and Syria and Mesopotamia. The first or the last sheaf of wheat was offered to the ``Great Mother,'' or the "Mother of the Wheat"—for the earth-power was essentially a feminine force. Astarte was the Earth Mother of the ancient Semites; to the Phrygians she was Semele; under the name of Demeter she was worshiped by the Greeks at the famous Eleusinian Mysteries; Ceres, the Roman goddess of corn, presided over the October Cerelia.

Thanksgiving for the plentiful foods did not just come into the mind of Governor Bradford in the year 1621 c.e. as some imagine. On the contrary, the pagan harvest festivals can be traced to the land of Ancient Babylon and the worship of the original great mother. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, page 413, tells us that Astarte is the Greek name for Ashtoreth, the Canaanite goddess of sensual love, maternity, and fertility. Licentious worship was conducted in her honor at her shrines.

Our Wonderful World, by Grolier Incorporated, Volume 17, page 220, tells us of the harvest festivals.

The Harvest Festivals
We often think of Thanksgiving as an American holiday, begun by the Pilgrims in Plymouth in 1621. At that time, so the story runs, the survivors among the Mayflower passengers celebrated their first harvest in the New World. Actually a thanksgiving for the annual harvest is one of the oldest holidays known to mankind, though celebrated on different dates. In Chaldea, in ancient Egypt, and in Greece, the harvest festival was celebrated with great rejoicing. From Holidays Around the World, by Joseph Gaer, by permission of Little, Brown & Co. Copyright, 1953, by Joseph Gaer. Revised by editor. 1959.
The Romans celebrated their Thanksgiving early in October. The holiday was dedicated to the goddess of the harvest, Ceres, and the holiday was called Cerelia. (That is where the word "cereal'' comes from).

From Rome to the New World
The Christians took over the Roman holiday and it became well established in England, where some of the Roman customs and rituals for this day were observed long after the Roman Empire had disappeared.
  In England the "harvest home'' has been observed continuously for centuries. The custom was to select a harvest queen for this holiday. She was decorated with the grain of their fields and the fruit of their trees. On Thanksgiving Day she was paraded through the streets in a carriage drawn by white horses. This was a remnant of the Roman ceremonies in honor of Ceres. But the English no longer thought of Ceres or cared much about her. They went to church on this day and sang their Thanksgiving songs.
  The Pilgrims brought the "harvest in" to Massachusetts. But they gave it a slightly new meaning, since they were thankful for much more than their harvest.
The merriment of the harvest festivals is older than recorded human history.

Thanksgiving day worship is merely the ancient fertility rites veneered with the respectability of Christianity. However, the fact still remains, that it is ancient fertility worship. The Apostle Shaul tells us of the gods, and the sacrifices to these gods:
I Corinthians 10:20-21—
20 But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to Yahweh; and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.
21 You cannot drink the Cup of Yahweh and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of Yahweh's Table and of the table of demons.

The Apostle Shaul has told us that the things the Gentiles sacrifice are sacrificed to the demons, and we are not to have any fellowship with this demon worship.

Romans 12:2—
And do not be conformed to the pattern of this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may be able to test and prove what is the Righteous, and acceptable, and Perfect Will of Yahweh.

I Yahchanan 2:15, 17—
15 Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
17 And the world passes away, with the lust that is in it; but he who does the Will of Yahweh abides forever.

I Yahchanan 5:19—
We know that we belong to Yahweh, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

It is an absolute fact that the world only loves worldly things. This holiday called Thanksgiving was used to help cement relations between the north and the south directly after the Civil War in the United States. The American Book of Days, by Hatch, page 26, tells us:
The establishment of a national Thanksgiving Day on a permanent annual basis was largely the result of the work of Sarah Josepha Hale. ...Hale's editorial appeared at a significant moment. The Civil War divided the nation into two armed camps in 1863. Despite the staggering loss of human life, the battle of Gettysburg was an important victory for the North. The result produced great rejoicing throughout the North, and this general feeling of elation, together with the clamor produced by Hale's editorials, undoubtedly prompted Abraham Lincoln to issue the proclamation on October 3, 1863, setting a last Thursday in November 1863 as a national Thanksgiving Day.

The world still loves this holiday, for it is now the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, which is so dear to merchants everywhere, and the signal for innumerable football games, so dear to fans everywhere. Continuing from The American Book of Days:
After three centuries as a holiday in its own right, Thanksgiving was rudely demoted to serve as the official opening day of the Christmas shopping season....and Madison Avenue saw Thanksgiving as a handy way to promote Christmas sales.
  In 1921, Gimbel's Department Store in Philadelphia sponsored the first Thanksgiving parade designed to kick off and promote the holiday buying season.
...The charge of commercialization could not be rebutted. Macy's responded to the claim of interference with churchgoing by scheduling the parade for 1:00 P.M. that year, but it was soon back in its morning time slot. The afternoon schedule would conflict with Thanksgiving football games and by the 1920s, that was the more serious conflict for many families.

So, when anyone, or any book, tries to tell you that Thanksgiving day is really in honor of Yahweh, you will know differently.

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