Gratitude: An ancient tradition

Thanksgiving has always carried far more meaning than the schoolbook version of the 1621 Plymouth gathering suggests. While the simplicity of “Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread” carries a valuable lesson, a deeper dive into history makes it far more interesting.

Thanksgiving-type events had already been held in Virginia, in Spanish settlements in Florida and throughout other early colonial outposts. The familiar label “First Thanksgiving” was applied much later, retroactively woven into a national legend that smoothed out the rough edges of early colonial life.

Thanksgiving is by no means an exclusively American story. Fall harvest celebrations, in one form or another, have been part of human life since prehistory. Archaeologists have found evidence of seasonal feasting at Neolithic sites throughout Europe, the Fertile Crescent, and East Asia, where large hearths, communal storage pits, cooking vessels, and ceremonial structures indicate gatherings tied to the end of the growing season. Even at Göbekli Tepe—dating to around 9600 BC, long before settled farming was fully established—archaeologists find evidence of organized gatherings featuring prepared grains and communal food. Harvest feasts appear in Mesopotamian tablets, in Egyptian festivals timed to the Nile’s flood cycle, in Bronze Age European ritual sites and in early Chinese inscriptions associated with reaping and storing grain.

Those early festivals, however, were far from the low-stakes affairs we know today. In our era, the chief hazards of Thanksgiving are failing to heat a turkey to 165 degrees or accidentally getting pulled into a debate with Uncle Bob about the shape of the Earth.

In ancient Europe, harvest festivals included animal sacrifices, symbolic “killings” of corn spirits and acts of ritualized destruction. In the Mediterranean world, end-of-season rites could involve offerings tied to myths of dying and returning gods. In pre-Columbian America, agricultural cycles were bound to cosmology and autumn observances could include human sacrifice—acts rooted in the belief that life itself depended on sustaining cosmic balance.

Amid those extremes, gratitude stood at the center. Ancient Egyptians offered thanks to Osiris for the Nile’s flood; the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated abundance and family continuity; Greek and Roman rites honored Demeter and Ceres with explicit thanksgiving for grain; and Indigenous peoples of North America—from Iroquois thanksgiving ceremonies to Eastern Woodlands Green Corn festivals—built gratitude directly into their ritual life.

Christians in North America maintained that pattern by declaring ‘thanksgivings’ as prayer-centered, church-led observances acknowledging the mercies of Providence in times of trial, relief, or unexpected blessing. Those early colonial thanksgivings—whether Puritan, Anglican, or Spanish Catholic—were more centered on religious rituals than harvest feasts. Ironically, Puritan and New England Protestants even marked the day by fasting and worship rather than the shared table we associate with the holiday today.

As we contemplate all of the above, the generosity of the Wampanoag should not be forgotten. English colonists were starving at Jamestown in 1609 and far from flourishing in Plymouth in 1621; Indigenous communities had lived on this continent for some 23,000 years and chose to share resources with newcomers.

So let’s remember that when we gather for Thanksgiving, we are making several observances. We are, at once, recognizing a religious observance of gratitude and an American foundational story, but we are also participating in a ritual far older than nations—one inherited from the first people who ever planted a seed, and though harvest festivals have taken many dramatic and even violent forms over thousands of years, gratitude has always been their heart. So as we gather this year, let us be grateful: for abundance and for the long human chain that connects our tables to the very beginnings of civilization.