November 22, 2007

History of Thanksgiving

Bill Federer is a researcher, and author of several books on the Christian heritage of the United States, including America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations.

On this program the roots of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony were traced, including the persecution that prompted the Pilgrims to leave England for Holland, and then for the New World, in order to be free to worship according to the dictates of their own consciences. they encountered difficulties from being blown off-course from Virginia to Cape Cod, arriving at the beginning of Winter, for which they were unprepared, causing about half of their number to die during the first year.

Yet Squanto, an Indian who was raised on that exact spot, appeared speaking perfect English because he had been taken as a slave to England, later to be freed and find his way back home only find his tribe had been wiped out by a disease. He was able to guide the Pilgrims to grow crops and survive in what they saw as a hostile climate.

The story was told of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, which lasted three days. The history of Thanksgiving proclamations from then until now was also reviewed, along with the contrast between the emphasis on thanking God in those early celebrations, to today's emphasis on excesses of food and relaxation with little or no thought of God--even to the point of revising the story to say the Pilgrims held Thanksgiving to thank the Indians.

This program originally aired November 22, 2001.

More Information

To order Bill Federer's America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations

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