Thanksgiving

The fourth Thursday of November in the United States; the second Monday of October in Canada

Their instructions to Captain John Woodlief order that the day his ship reaches Virginia be kept every year as a thanksgiving to God. History.com says the settlers reached Berkeley Hundred, on the James River, on December 4, 1619, and read the order as they landed. It is the earliest order for a yearly thanksgiving found in English America. The same instructions order the Lord’s Day kept and the festivals of the Church of England observed.

shall be yearly and perpetualy keept holy as a day of thanksgiuing to Almighty god.

Winslow’s letter tells of a harvest gathering of three days with the Wampanoag leader Massasoit and about ninety of his men. It is the one detailed eyewitness account, and it names fowl and deer as the food. Winslow does not call the gathering a thanksgiving, and no proclamation is recorded. History.com says the colonists may not have used the term; New Englanders began calling the feast the “First Thanksgiving” in the 1830s (Plimoth Patuxet Museums). The History.com page prints Winslow’s words with the spelling modernized.

Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says that festival days have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued, and also that a day may be set apart for thanksgiving when an extraordinary providence gives cause. This is the Reformed line: thanks on an occasion, and no stated holy day. Gentle Reformation, a Presbyterian site, says the colonists’ Reformed heritage allowed days of thanks on that ground.

Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued. Nevertheless, it is lawful and necessary, upon special emergent occasions, to separate a day or days for publick fasting or thanksgiving

On September 28 the first Congress asked the President to recommend a day of thanksgiving. A few days later Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789. Dates varied from year to year after that. History.com notes that Thomas Jefferson was the one early president who refused to proclaim such days, citing the separation of church and state.

The first American prayer book gives the church a service of thanks for the harvest, set for every year on a fixed day or the day the civil authority names. Here a church makes the day part of its own worship. The Episcopal prayer book still lists Thanksgiving Day in its calendar, among the National Days.

to be used yearly on the First Thursday in November, or on such other day as shall be appointed by the Civil Authority.

After Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, wrote to him on September 28 (History.com dates her campaign for a national day from 1827), Lincoln proclaims the last Thursday of November a day of thanksgiving. The text is by Secretary of State William Seward. Until then each state chose its own day.

set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

The first Macy’s parade, then called the Macy’s Christmas Parade, is held to show the opening of its enlarged flagship store at the start of the holiday shopping season.

In 1939 Roosevelt moves the holiday a week earlier to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, and 16 states refuse. To end the confusion Congress sets a fixed date. Roosevelt signs it on December 26, 1941: the fourth Thursday of November.

Since 1970 Native people and their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth on Thanksgiving for a National Day of Mourning. They say many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the colonists. Native views differ: answers gathered by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian are, in its words, extremely diverse, and some families keep a meal and give thanks together.

Thanksgiving has three roots, and none of them is a command of the New Testament. One is the harvest feast. The second is the day of thanks for a particular blessing, which the Reformed churches allowed (H3) and the colonies kept, and which the Virginia company ordered kept yearly (H1). The third is the government proclamation: Washington in 1789, Lincoln in 1863, Congress in 1941 (H4, H6, H8). The yearly day we know is the work of those proclamations and of Hale’s campaign, not of Plymouth.

The Plymouth feast of 1621 is real (H2), but the “First Thanksgiving” story was built later. Winslow’s letter does not call it a thanksgiving, and New Englanders first called it the “First Thanksgiving” in the 1830s. Even the name “Pilgrims” is later. Bradford wrote that at their leaving Holland “they knew they were pilgrimes” (compare Hebrews 11:13), but the word was first printed as a name for the colonists in 1798, at Boston (Albert Matthews, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1914), and Americans did not use it widely until the 1870s (Smithsonian, National Museum of the American Indian). Winslow names fowl and deer, History.com notes that no record of the exact menu exists, and the costumes of the school pageant are not in the record.

Plymouth, 1621

Berkeley Hundred, Virginia, 1619

Spanish Florida, 1565

The Episcopal Church

Roman Catholics in the United States

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

Presbyterian and Reformed churches

The Churches of Christ

Jehovah’s Witnesses

United American Indians of New England

A Thursday service

Many churches hold one service, on Thursday morning or Thanksgiving Eve, and some neighboring congregations join in a union service.

Liturgy and prayers

The Episcopal Church uses a harvest collect, Catholics Mass prayers from the Roman Missal, and Russian Orthodox parishes a prayer service with an akathist hymn of thanks.

Hymns of thanks

“Now Thank We All Our God” was written by Martin Rinckart during or soon after the Thirty Years’ War. “We Gather Together” is a Dutch hymn first printed in 1626 that says more about God’s providence than the harvest, and later hymnals joined it to Thanksgiving.

The family meal

A prayer, then a feast: a custom from colonial days that crossed into the market. Winslow’s letter of 1621 names fowl and deer (H2), and History.com notes that no record of the exact menu exists.

The Macy’s parade

Began in 1924 as a Christmas parade to open the shopping season (H7).

The shopping weekend

The National Retail Federation counted a record 202.9 million shoppers from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday in 2025.

The church’s appointed remembrance is weekly, and it is itself a thanksgiving

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper at which Christ gave thanks (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord Himself gave the memorial, and Paul says that on the night He was betrayed Jesus “had given thanks” before He broke the bread (S2). Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church’s thanks, offered each Lord’s Day, needs no second yearly feast added to its worship.

The record bears this out. The first yearly thanksgivings in the record are colonial orders and civil proclamations, sixteen centuries after the church began (H1, H6).

Thanks are commanded at all times, in the assembly and out of it

Scripture tells every Christian to give thanks in everything and the church to pray with thanksgiving for all, rulers included (S3, S4, S5).

“In everything give thanks” (S3). Whatever a Christian does, they do in the name of the Lord Jesus, “giving thanks to God the Father through him” (S4). Paul tells the church to offer “thanksgivings” for all men, and for kings and all in high place (S5). So a congregation should thank God for harvest, peace and rulers in its ordinary worship, and no one need wait for a holiday to do it.

None of these texts names a day. They command the thanks and leave the occasions to judgment, so a congregation may lead its prayers on the week of the holiday toward gratitude. What the texts do not give is a yearly holy day of the church (A3).

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to, and forbids each to judge the other (S6, S7).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S6). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a new feast. It does give the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between them and the Lord, and no one may judge them for it. In Colossians the days were “a shadow of the things to come” (S7), and the church is not to be judged by them.

So a Christian may keep Thanksgiving as a family and national holiday and give thanks at the table. What they may not do is make the day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.” Strict Reformed critics apply this to any fixed yearly observance, and a yearly Thanksgiving is one.

Verses 8 and 9 say who these readers were: Gentiles who had once served beings that by nature are no gods, now turning back to “weak and beggarly rudiments.” The Galatians were taking up a calendar as a way to stand right with God (4:21 and 5:4), and Paul fears his labor was in vain. The text strikes at a day made necessary to please God, so it fits a feast imposed on the church as a duty. It does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S6). It is not used here against the family meal.

Jeroboam set a feast “in the month which he had devised of his own heart.” A ruler appointing a day of religious feasting is the pattern of the state’s Thanksgiving.

Jeroboam’s feast was a rival to the feast God had appointed. It came with a calf at Beth-el, an altar he made, and priests from outside Levi (1 Kings 12:26-31). The sin was worship invented to compete with God’s own, not a ruler calling for gratitude. Still, the text is a warning that a ruler has no power to add days to the church’s worship. It condemns a government that makes its holiday the church’s feast, and it does not touch a civil day kept as a civil day.

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.” Supporters read this as a call to give thanks together in public, so a day set apart for it adds nothing foreign to worship.

The psalm calls God’s people to thank Him in His house, and the church should: every Lord’s Day (A1, A2). But it commands the thanks, not a day, and not a day set by the state. The psalm does not tell us which days to choose, and the church’s weekly assembly already meets it.

God Himself appointed a harvest feast for His people, to rejoice before Him when the fruits of the land were gathered. A Christian harvest thanksgiving follows God’s own pattern.

The feast was God’s, given to Israel under the law of Moses, and it is among the feast days that Paul calls a shadow (S7). That God appointed it shows He is pleased with grateful hearts at harvest. It does not authorize people to appoint a copy for the church. The difference between a day God gave and a day men chose is the difference this page rests on (A1).

The Jews set apart a yearly day “of feasting and gladness” after a deliverance. The Westminster standards cite this text for days of thanks, and Scripture records it without rebuke.

This is the strongest case for a yearly day, and it should be granted its point. Purim was not given at Sinai: Mordecai wrote it, and “the Jews ordained, and took upon them” to keep it every year (9:27), and Scripture records it without rebuke. So a people may keep a yearly day of thanks for a deliverance, and a Christian may share in such a national day (A3). But Purim was kept with feasting, portions and gifts to the poor in homes and cities across the empire, not as an act of the temple’s worship, and the New Testament gives the church no such day. The text supports a nation’s holiday. It does not make that holiday a feast of the church (A1).

The harvest feast was for the whole household, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. Thanksgiving carries the same generosity.

Generosity at the table is good, and a Christian is free to practice it on any day, including this one (A3). The text again describes a feast under the law of Moses, kept at the place God chose, and the church has no such command.

Study

• Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:24 show a weekly assembly where Jesus “had given thanks.” What is the Lord’s Supper if not a thanksgiving? Does a yearly day add anything the church lacks?
• The Westminster Directory allows a day of thanks for a special blessing and rejects a stated holy day (H3). Is a day the state fixes every year “occasional” or “stated”? What would you ask a church that keeps it?
• Jeroboam’s feast (1 Kings 12:33) was condemned. Was it the ruler’s power over a feast, or the rival altar and priests? What does the answer say about a government that proclaims a day of thanks?
• Romans 14:6 says the one who keeps a day does so “unto the Lord” and gives thanks. How can a family keep the holiday without making it a rule for the church?
• The “First Thanksgiving” of the school story was built long after 1621 (H2). Does it matter for the church how a custom began, if the New Testament does not give it?

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