Here we are in the midst of the Thanksgiving holiday in America and I thought it important to really understand where and how this wonderful holiday, enriched with all sorts of feasting and family time, came about in the first place.

Most stories of Thanksgiving start with the harvest celebration of the pilgrims which stems from their ancient Pagan background and celebration of Lughnasadh where in England the year’s harvest was celebrated and like many Pagan holidays, officially adopted and recognized by the Church of England as Apple Day or Harvest Home.

Known in Modern Ireland as Lá Lúnasa, in Welsh as Gwyl Awst, in Manx as Lla Lluanys, as Laa'n Ouyr (Day of the Harvest Season) or as Lammas. Throughout Western Europe essentially it is a harvest festival that signals the beginning of the harvest season and the ripening of the apples as well as other fruits and vegetables. Applejack, hard cider, mead and other alcoholic beverages were made and consumed at this time.

This holiday is a day of mixed joy and woe (Irish wakes are an old tradition), for it is by now obvious that the days are getting shorter. Stories of the battles between Lugh and Balor (the light, Sun & Fire Yahweh and the dark one) are retold, as the autumn quarter of Foghamhar begins.

The Pilgrims brought their rituals and celebrations with them to the new world and thus after a bountiful harvest of that year it was only natural to carry on the traditions just like they did back in merry old England but I may be getting ahead of myself.

The very first recorded Thanksgiving celebration between the Pilgrims and the Indians took place in the autumn of 1621. Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest, and the local Indians did participate, this "first Thanksgiving" was not a holiday, simply a gathering.

There is little evidence that this feast of thanks led directly to our modern Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving can, however, be traced back to 1863 when Pres. Lincoln became the first president to proclaim a Thanksgiving Day. The holiday has been a fixture of late November ever since.

However, since most school children are taught that the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621 with the pilgrims and Indians, let us take a closer look at just what took place leading up to that event, and then what happened in the centuries afterward that finally gave us our modern Thanksgiving. You know me. I have to dig deeper.

The Pilgrims who sailed to this country aboard the Mayflower were originally members of the English Separatist Church (a Puritan sect). They had earlier fled their home in England and sailed to Holland (The Netherlands) to escape religious persecution. There, they enjoyed more religious tolerance, but they eventually became disenchanted with the Dutch way of life, thinking it ungodly and sinful.

Seeking a better life, the Separatists negotiated with a London stock company to finance a pilgrimage to America. Most of those making the trip aboard the Mayflower were non-Separatists but were hired to protect the company's interests. I bet you didn’t know that only about one-third of the original colonists were Separatists.

The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620 in the middle of winter! Talk about planning! Their first winter was devastating to say the least. At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower! But the harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one as I said earlier.

The remaining colonists decided to celebrate in compliance with their traditions with a feast. If it were not for a local Indian community, the Pilgrims would have suffered many more losses and the harvest would have been much less. The Indians introduced their native crops to the Pilgrims and thus gave them more food for the coming winter.

91 Indians who that had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year were invited guest. The feast was more of a traditional English harvest festival than a true "thanksgiving" observance as we’re familiar. It was more in line with Harvest Home and as tradition in England lasted three days.

Governor William Bradford sent four men after wild ducks and geese. It is not certain that wild turkey was part of their feast. However, it is certain that they had venison. I bet you didn’t know that the term "turkey" was used by the Pilgrims to mean any sort of wild fowl.

Another modern staple at almost every Thanksgiving table is pumpkin pie. But it is unlikely that the first feast included that treat. The supply of flour had been long diminished, so there was no bread or pastries of any kind. However, they did eat boiled pumpkin, and they produced a type of fried bread from their corn crop much like our modern day cornbread hush puppies that we enjoy today.

There was also no milk, cider, potatoes, or butter. There were no domestic cattle for dairy products, and the newly-discovered potato was still considered by many Europeans to be poisonous! But the feast did include fish, wild berries, watercress, lobster, dried fruit, clams, venison, and plums.

This "thanksgiving" feast was not repeated the following year. Many years passed before the event was repeated. It wasn't until June of 1676 that another Day of thanksgiving was proclaimed. On June 20 of that year the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the good fortune that had seen their community securely established. By unanimous vote they instructed Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of thanksgiving.

It is notable that this thanksgiving celebration probably did not include the Indians, as the celebration was meant partly to be in recognition of the colonists' recent victory over the "heathen natives". How times changed and memories faded by then. Sad but true.

A hundred years later, in October of 1777 all 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration. It also commemorated the patriotic victory over the British at Saratoga. But again it was a one-time affair not to be repeated during the War of Independence.

Right after the war George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, although some were opposed to it. There was discord among the colonies, many feeling the hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. And later, President Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea of having a day of thanksgiving fearing the sanction of the government for religion and thus the argument of today’s church and state debates that still go on today.

It was Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, whose efforts eventually led to what we recognize as Thanksgiving today. Hale wrote many editorials championing her cause in her Boston Ladies' Magazine, and later, in Godey's Lady's Book. Finally, Hale's obsession became a reality when, in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was proclaimed by every president after Lincoln. The date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the year in order to create a longer Christmas season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later. And in 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.

I think that should be enough or your brains are going to explode. So now you know some of the true origins of Thanksgiving. Like a rich beautiful vine, has its roots deep in Pagan Lughnasadh and intertwines throughout early English and American culture till we arrive to where we are today. I wish everyone on the Tribe a Happy Thanksgiving and a Happy Lughnasadh to be spent with the ones you love.

Next up is Christmas so fasten your seatbelts!