Revolutionary Era Thanksgiving History

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving. After what was mostly a lull for nearly a hundred years, Thanksgiving enjoyed a bit of a resurgence during the American Revolution. In 1777, all thirteen colonies celebrated Thanksgiving in kind of like a national Thanksgiving, commemorating the victory over the British in the Battle of Saratoga which was a nice American victory which were few and far between, especially in the earlier years of the Revolutionary War. This was also neat because Thanksgiving had been more localized up in the New England area and this was all thirteen colonies were celebrating in many ways for the first time ever. And George Washington, hero of the Revolution, and also the first president of the United States, went on to commemorate Thanksgiving as kind of like a day of national thanksgiving in 1789. Now Washington immediately came under fire for this. There are some people who didn't feel a national day of thanksgiving was necessary, that it was some strange northeastern Puritan thing but the rest of the nation, especially the south which had a very different kind of like cultural experience than New England did, didn't really need that, didn't need it to be a national thing. Other later presidents after Washington downright didn't like it because you actually had it where the president had to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving, each and every year, but it began with George Washington."