The Origin of Thanksgiving · A History in Pictures from Plymouth 1621 to Thanksgiving Sunday in Korean Churches
Thanksgiving comes around every year, yet many people are not quite sure when, where, or how it began. In this post we will follow, step by step and with pictures, how a story that began 400 years ago in a small seaside village in America found its way to the churches of Korea.
In Korea, churches observe Thanksgiving Sunday on November 15 this year. At the end of the post you will find questions you can use right away with children at church and with youth groups.
🤖 Pictures 1 to 5 and picture 7 were drawn with AI (ChatGPT) based on records and photographs from the time. They are released under CC0 1.0, so you may use them freely without credit. Picture 6 is a photograph of the original document held by the U.S. National Archives (public domain).
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The Whole Story at a Glance
Let us begin with the big picture. Four hundred years flow from left to right.
A harvest feast held in a small American village (1621) became a day kept by the whole nation some 240 years later (1863). Then that tradition crossed the ocean with missionaries and became a season of the church calendar in Korea (1904).
Now let us look at each scene slowly, one at a time.
1. Autumn 1621: The First Harvest of People Who Crossed the Sea
Corn is being harvested in a small village of only a few thatched houses.
In 1620, a ship called the Mayflower carried a group of English people across the wide ocean to the land that is now the United States. They are often called the “Pilgrims.” The place where they settled is Plymouth, in what is now the state of Massachusetts.
Their first winter was very hard. Many of them died, and by the following autumn only about 50 people were still alive. The first harvest gathered by these survivors is where the Thanksgiving story begins.
We know what happened that autumn thanks to a single letter. It was written in December of that year by one of the villagers, Edward Winslow, to a friend in England, and it was printed as part of a book in England the following year. It is practically the only record left by someone who saw the feast with his own eyes.
The letter shows that the village was very small: seven houses for families and four buildings shared by the whole settlement. They planted about 20 acres (about 8.1 hectares) of corn and about 6 acres (about 2.4 hectares) of barley and peas. The corn and barley grew well, but the peas yielded nothing worth gathering.
So this was not a season of great abundance. It was a precious first harvest, held in their hands after a hard first year.
2. “Our Governor Sent Four Men on Fowling”
Geese and ducks fly over the coastal marsh.
When the harvest was in, William Bradford, the governor who led the village, made time for everyone to rejoice together. Winslow described it like this.
The letter does not say what kind of birds they were. Here is one thing worth noticing: the roast turkey we picture at Thanksgiving does not appear in this record.
Governor Bradford did write that there were many wild turkeys in the woods that autumn. But no record says that turkey was served at the feast.
3. Ninety Guests at the Feast
Wampanoag men carry deer on poles into the village.
Guests joined this feast. They were the Wampanoag, the Native people who had long lived in that land.
Massasoit was the leader of the Wampanoag. It was also from the Native people that the English had learned how to plant corn and catch fish in this unfamiliar land.
The village had only about 50 people and the guests numbered 90, so the guests outnumbered the hosts almost two to one. The guests did not come empty handed. They hunted five deer and helped fill the feast.
4. A Feast That Lasted Three Days
Venison, fowl and corn dishes sit on a table made of planks and barrels.
The feast did not end in one day. It went on for three days. They ate together and enjoyed games, and the English also held a drill, marching in step with their guns.
Because the pictures in this post show only what the records describe, they look a little different from the Thanksgiving pictures we usually see. Here are three points.
- The colors of their clothes
We tend to imagine the Pilgrims in black clothes and hats with buckles. In fact they wore clothes of many colors. The list of belongings left by Governor Bradford mentions a red waistcoat, a violet cloak and green clothing. The image of black clothing took hold much later, through paintings made long afterward. - The table
The village was not yet a year old, so there was very little proper furniture. Museum experts think they probably laid planks across barrels and used them as tables. - The name
The word “Thanksgiving” appears nowhere in Winslow’s letter. Calling this feast “the first Thanksgiving” came much later.
So how did the feast of this small village become a holiday for the whole nation? This is where one person enters the story.
5. The Woman Who Wrote Letters for 36 Years: Sarah Josepha Hale
Drawn from Hale’s actual portraits and silhouette. When she wrote the letter in September 1863, Hale was 74 years old.
After 1621, days of thanksgiving were kept in many parts of America, but each region chose its own date. One person saw this and spoke up: “Let the whole nation give thanks together on the same day.” She was Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book.
Beginning in 1827, Hale wrote articles in her magazine and sent letters to the nation’s leaders, asking them to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Thirty six years went by.
Then, on September 28, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, when America was divided between North and South, Hale wrote once again to President Lincoln.
6. October 3, 1863: Lincoln’s Proclamation
The three pages of Lincoln’s original Thanksgiving Proclamation, a public domain record held by the U.S. National Archives.
Five days after Hale wrote her letter, on October 3, President Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday of November should be kept by all the people as a day of thanksgiving to God. The photograph above shows the original proclamation. On the middle page you can find the words “the last Thursday of November.”
Even though the nation was at war, the proclamation opens by confessing that the fruitful fields, the healthful skies and peace were gifts from God.
After that, the president announced the date every year, and in 1941 it was fixed by law as “the fourth Thursday of November.” That is why Thanksgiving in the United States is still the fourth Thursday of November. This year it falls on November 26.
7. Thanksgiving in the Churches of Korea
Drawn from a photograph of Sorae Church taken around 1895 by missionary Lillias Underwood.
This tradition also came to Korea, carried by American missionaries.
In Korea, in 1904, a meeting of Presbyterian church leaders (the Presbyterian Council) set apart a “mission thanksgiving day.” It was a day to thank God that missionaries had come to Korea and shared the gospel. This is counted as the beginning of Thanksgiving in Korean churches.
The date first chosen was different from today’s, and it changed several times afterward. Sources describe those changes a little differently. Today most Korean churches keep the third Sunday of November as Thanksgiving Sunday. This year it falls on November 15.
The church in the picture is Sorae Church, which stood in Jangyeon, Hwanghae Province. It was founded in 1883 by two brothers, Seo Sangryun and Seo Gyeongjo, and is known as the first church founded by Koreans themselves rather than by missionaries. It began as a small thatched house. As the congregation grew, it was rebuilt in 1895 as a tile roofed building and doubled in size the following year. We include it here because it shows the Korean church in the days when it was just beginning to grow.
The original building no longer stands, but a restored sanctuary can be seen at the Yangji campus of Chongshin University.
Some Korean churches give thanks at Chuseok
In Korea, some people feel that the third Sunday of November follows an American tradition and does not match the season when Korean farmers bring in their crops. So Kyungdong Church has held its harvest thanksgiving service around Chuseok, the Korean autumn harvest festival, since 1974, and Hyanglin Church since 1994.
8. An Older Root: The Harvest Feasts of the Bible
A heart that gives thanks for the harvest is far older than Plymouth. In the Bible, God told the people of Israel to keep feasts of thanksgiving every year when they gathered their crops.
Put simply, God’s people were to give thanks once when they gathered the first fruits (the Feast of Harvest), and once again when the whole year’s crops were gathered into the storehouse (the Feast of Ingathering).
Deuteronomy 16 says that when these feasts are kept, not only the family but also the servants, the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows should all rejoice together. Thanksgiving was not something to enjoy alone but something to share with neighbors, just as the guests outnumbered the hosts at the feast of 1621.
We look more closely at these biblical feasts in the next post, Harvest Feasts in the Bible.
Questions for Children and Youth Groups
- The people of Plymouth held a feast of thanksgiving even though they could not harvest a single pea. Among the things that did not go the way you hoped this year, can you find one thing to be thankful for?
- At the feast, the guests outnumbered the hosts almost two to one. The Bible also tells us to rejoice together with foreigners, the fatherless and widows. This Thanksgiving, who could our class share thanks with?
- Hale kept writing letters for 36 years without giving up. What have you been praying about for a long time? Shall we thank God ahead of time, the One who hears that prayer?
More Resources
- Our Thanksgiving activity sheets for children (answers included) are now available. PPT backgrounds and coloring pages will be added to our Thanksgiving collection as they are ready.
Sources
- Edward Winslow’s letter (Mourt’s Relation, 1622) · Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plimoth Patuxet
- Clothing and daily life in Plymouth · History of Massachusetts, Archaeology interview with a curator
- Hale and Lincoln · U.S. National Park Service, U.S. National Archives
- The 1941 law · HISTORY
- Thanksgiving in Korean churches (in Korean) · iGoodNews, Kukmin Ilbo
- Sorae Church · Incheon In (in Korean), 1895 photograph (Wikimedia Commons)
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
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