If we've left out some of your favorites, pleaseĪnd we'll add them to our "To Do Soon!" list.Īlso, since we do not have videos for most of the songs on this page, we'd be glad to have you provide them. As with the whole site, this is a work in progress and we'll be adding songs regularly, so check back often. There are many Christian hymns of thanksgiving, some of which are associated with Thanksgiving Day, and we've provided the music for some of these below.
A mass was said by the Franciscan missionaries traveling with the expedition. Included in the event was a feast, supplied with game by the Spaniards and with fish by the natives of the region. Ten days later, having recuperated from their desperate journey, Oñate ordered a day of thanksgiving for the survival of the expedition. They arrived at the Rio Grande just in time to save them from all dying of thirst. They endured many hardships and finally ran completely out of food and water 5 days from their destination, surviving by eating roots of desert vegetation. In 1598 Juan de Oñate, who had been granted land in the northern Rio Grande Valley, led an expedition of 500 people on a 50-day march across the Chihuahuan Desert. Finally, in 1941, congress passed a bill naming the fourth Thursday in each November as Thanksgiving Day.Īs a Texan, I must point out that there are claims that the “First Thanksgiving” in the New World was actually held in what is now El Paso, Texas. Since then, every American president has issued an annual Thanksgiving proclamation. It was not until 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln resumed the tradition of Thanksgiving proclamations. The first national day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed by George Washington in 1789, but thereafter, it was left to the governors of the various states and territories to proclaim days of Thanksgiving.
The colonists did not intend to establish an annual holiday and there was no official "Thanksgiving proclamation." Two years later they held the first “religious” thanksgiving when they held a special church service to give thanks for a rain that ended a drought.īy the second half of the 17th century many communities were having annual days of thanksgiving, often including prayer and fasting, after the harvest. The celebration was also a one-time event. However, though the Pilgrims were a very religious people and regularly expressed their thanks to God, the 1621 festivities were more in the tradition of a harvest festival than a religious occasion.
In the United States, most people think of the "First Thanksgiving" as the celebration at Plymouth, when the Pilgrims hosted a feast with the local Native Americans as their guests in 1621.
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