Have A Mythological Thanksgiving

I just wanted to take a minute or twenty and wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving break and ponder the meaning of the holiday. The idea was largely based upon my own curiosity, as I wondered what the differences between history and tradition were. Many of us will sit down to a nice big family dinner, but how and why did this become the societal norm? Is it based upon celebrating the Pilgrim's first harvest festival in what would later become the USA, or is the whole thing a story invented to market Butterball turkeys?

The thing I've found interesting about the topic is the contention over who held the first Thanksgiving. The story many of us hear is about the pilgrims who landed in 1620 at Plymouth rock. After a year of hardships, the first harvest season came about since landing. It was a party to commemorate their survival and is often seen as an olive branch between the Pilgrims and the Indians. Some Texans argue, however, that the first Thanksgiving was held by its settlers in 1598 after a 350 mile hike across the desert and the Texans aren't the only ones who want a slice of the action. The Berkley Plantation in Virginia makes claims of holding the first Thanksgiving in 1619, two years before the pilgrims.

No matter which story you look at though, there are no doubt parallels between them. In all three cases, we see people overcoming great hardships after traveling a long ways to make a home in a new land. Perhaps they displace Cadmus over coming his trials to found Thebes, or more likely Theseus bringing change to a land already settled. The holidays celebrating the deeds of the first European settlers on this continent have been carried on year after year by a few New Englanders since they first occurred, but it wasn't until Lincoln's presidency in 1863 that it became a National Holiday.

Why did the Pilgrims, Texans, and Virginians all celebrate the same holiday in different places and years without communication between each other? Harvest festivals are as old as the dirt in which we plant our grain. How will Demeter know we're thankful if we don't show our appreciation? Why not give praise to Asherah for the gifts she has given us? Persephone may already be in the underworld, but there is still much left behind to sustain us during her stay.