The first Christmas celebration in Colorado is well documented. It happened a few miles north of Salida in 1806. There Capt. Zebulon M. Pike’s party rested for a day and feasted on fresh-killed bison.
But the first Colorado Thanksgiving has been hard to track down. In some ways, Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, and most agricultural societies hold them – think of the pickle judging at the county fair.
The Anasazi probably held some celebration when the beans and squash were harvested and fat turkeys were broiling. But we have no way to know for sure, and it’s a safe bet that they didn’t hold it in late November, which is about two months too late to celebrate a harvest in Colorado.
The Utes, as nearly as I can tell, did not hold a harvest festival, probably because they didn’t practice much agriculture. Their main celebration was the Bear Dance in the spring, when the greenery returned. Doubtless there was an element of gratitude, as in “We’re thankful for making it through another winter,” a sentiment shared in the spring by many of us who now inhabit their old homelands.
At any rate, Thanksgiving as an American holiday began in New England. The 1621 Pilgrim feast, to which Massasoit was invited, was a traditional English harvest festival. It did not become associated with our Thanksgiving until the 19th century.
Even so, New England states proclaimed and celebrated autumnal Thanksgiving Days from time to time, making it a regional holiday. The first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed by the Continental Congress in 1777, and the federal government declared such days, off and on, through 1815. Then Thanksgiving reverted to being a regional New England event.
Our modern American Thanksgiving began in 1863 as a proclamation from President Abraham Lincoln. Many Coloradans doubtless celebrated it, since the territory had strong Union sentiment. For one thing, the Lincoln administration maintained popularity in the western territories by not enforcing the draft out here.
Lincoln was prodded toward Thanksgiving by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” a popular magazine of the day. For several years, she editorialized that the “last Thursday in November” should be “the grand Thanksgiving Holiday of our nation, when the noise and tumult of worldliness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart.”
In 1863, Lincoln proclaimed Aug. 6 a day of national thanksgiving for the Union victory at Gettysburg a month earlier, and then on Oct. 3, he took Hale’s advice and proclaimed “the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise” since the year had been “filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” Also, there were “the advancing armies and navies of the Union.”
Similar statements issued from the nether side of the Mason-Dixon line then. For instance, Confederate President Jefferson Davis announced that Nov. 15, 1861, should be a day of “fasting, humiliation and prayer.” But his side lost, so we have feasting instead of fasting.
The major change since Lincoln’s time came in 1941, when Thanksgiving was moved from the “last Thursday” to the “fourth Thursday” of November. This was done to ensure enough time for Christmas shopping – in those days, stores actually waited until after Thanksgiving to start their Christmas promotions, rather then running up the holly right after Halloween.
What to be thankful for in America this year? I’ll go for this: that there are men like Sen. John McCain who will stand up to George Bush and Dick Cheney on torture, and like Rep. John Murtha who will stand up to them on the war in Iraq. That there are judges who will tell the president of the United States that he does not have the right to imprison American citizens indefinitely without filing charges just by declaring them “enemy combatants.”
Mostly I’m thankful that increasing numbers of Americans, of all political stripes, are standing up for what America should stand for. That’s worthy of celebration.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
