Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love family and friends coming together and sharing a big meal. I actually enjoy spending the day in the kitchen stuffing and roasting the turkey with a football game running in the background. As we sit down to enjoy the feast, the day's theme strikes home for me. I have so much to be thankful for: a happy and healthy family, a humble home, a wonderful church, lots of friends, and all our needs being met. But after the hustle and bustle of reaching this moment, it’s time to thank God for his provision and blessings. I have to take a deep breath before offering to pray. All the preparation and activity can distract me from the main point: we’ve taken this day as a nation to focus on thankfulness and gratitude and, as Christians, specifically, our thanksgiving to God.

Since 1863, Thanksgiving Day has been a national holiday in the United States. God calls his people to live thankful lives all the time, but our forebears decided to establish one day each year to emphasize giving thanks as a nation. Since it’s a federal holiday, some might ask, “Is Thanksgiving a Christian holiday?” The answer to that question is a definite “yes and no.” Yes, on the one hand, because giving thanks to God for his blessings and provision was the stated purpose of the holiday declared in 1863. But, on the other hand, no, because Thanksgiving Day is not part of the traditional liturgical calendar like Christmas and Easter. From that perspective, it is a secular holiday despite its remaining Christian overtones, and perhaps a majority of families in the U.S., whatever their relationship with God, still “say grace” before the Thanksgiving meal.

In any case, Thanksgiving does have deep roots in Christianity. And at the end of the day, as we slip into our food comas, we’re free to make our Thanksgiving Day celebrations as Christian as we like. Let’s take a quick look at the history of Thanksgiving in the United States.

A brief history of Thanksgiving

When discussing the history of Thanksgiving, we usually start with the Pilgrims. Quite a bit of myth surrounds the Pilgrims and the “first” Thanksgiving. Generally, the myths oversimplify the actual facts. What is true is that the Pilgrims, hoping to obtain more religious freedom apart from the Church of England, sailed across the Atlantic aboard a ship called the Mayflower as part of a for-profit venture underwritten by investors in England. Arriving in November 1620, the Pilgrims quickly discovered they were woefully ill-prepared for a New England winter. Before that first winter’s end, starvation and disease killed nearly half of the 100 or so settlers.

It wasn’t until spring that the local Native Americans, the Wampanoag, approached the Pilgrims in hopes of making an alliance against another tribe that threatened them. They had kept their distance because earlier English explorers had kidnapped some of the indigenous people and taken them to Europe as enslaved people. The Wampanoag had a man living with them who had been one of those kidnapped and enslaved, who had regained his freedom and returned to America. His name was Tisquantum, or Squanto, as some of his Pilgrim friends would call him. Tisquantum spoke English and taught the Pilgrims to plant corn, hunt, and fish. By the late fall of 1621, the settlement had laid up a great store for the coming winter. They celebrated with several days of prayers, feasting, and games. Hearing the festivities, about 90 Wampanoag people joined the fun, contributing venison and corn to the feast.

Many now think of these days of thanksgiving as “the first Thanksgiving.” But the tradition of declaring days of thanksgiving long predated the Pilgrims’ celebration in 1621. Community leaders could proclaim a day of thanksgiving at any time of year, but would often do so after a particularly good harvest. The Pilgrims’ feasts were probably not even the first days of thanksgiving in North or South America. However, the tradition was more common in the New England colonies, and as years passed, it became more regular. As New Englanders migrated west, they took their traditions with them. An enduring legend arose from the dramatic events in 1620 and 1621 that most certainly fueled the burgeoning custom through the nearly 200 years that followed. By the early 1800s, days of thanksgiving were being sporadically proclaimed nationally and at the state level, most often in the late fall. By the mid-19th century, many states in the North held annual thanksgiving holidays in the fall as days to give corporate thanks to God for his provision and blessings in the harvest. By this time, the tradition had also begun to include foods found primarily in eastern North America, most notably turkey. Proponents of making Thanksgiving a national holiday harkened back to those days of feasting in 1621 as the first Thanksgiving…even if it wasn’t the first.

A civic holiday with religious roots

It was in 1863, during the American Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln, responding to a letter from Sarah Hale, a famous author and editor (who had penned the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb), proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day:

I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States…to 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. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged…. (Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863).

Thanksgiving Day has been observed annually in the U.S. since 1863. Perhaps even before 1863, Thanksgiving drew people back to their homes to gather with family. It quickly became customary to generously give at that time of year so that those who were less well off “can have a nice Thanksgiving.”

Days of thanksgiving were proclaimed so that the whole community would pause for the express purpose of giving thanks to God. As the custom grew and became more widely observed, the primary purpose of expressing gratitude to God remained the focal point of the tradition. Starting with Abraham Lincoln, U.S. presidents have issued an annual proclamation of Thanksgiving inviting the nation, either directly or indirectly, to give thanks to God for our nation’s prosperity all together as a people.

The Bible encourages Christians to live their lives in a posture of thanksgiving:

Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:18b-20).

So, is Thanksgiving a Christian holiday? Yes and no. Thanksgiving Day is a civic holiday that arose from a custom transplanted to North America by European Christians, including the Puritans and the Pilgrims. Likely inspired by the trauma and triumph of the Pilgrim settlers and a genuine desire to give thanks as a whole community, the practice of thanksgiving days grew until there was a strong movement in the mid-1800s to make Thanksgiving a national day for giving thanks to God for his great provision and many blessings.

Thanksgiving is as Christian as we make it. For me, that means pausing amid the preparations to focus my gratitude on God. It means inviting my family and guests to participate in the corporate aspect of giving thanks. I don’t hang too much on the prayer before the meal; no matter how thankful they are, everyone is ready to eat. After everyone has been served and has tasted their food, we talk about what we’re grateful for during the meal. We don’t put anyone on the spot; we just share as we feel led. Some families worship together, do Bible readings, read a quick devotion, or have a time of prayer. We may each thank our loving God in whatever way he moves us.

If you want to explore Thanksgiving more, check out these resources from Today and our sister programs at ReFrame Ministries.

7 Thanksgiving Devotions is a collection of devotions about giving genuine thanks to God through Jesus Christ.

The Power of a Grateful Heart is a series of devotions exploring deep questions about the role of thanksgiving in our lives: For what are we thankful? What role did thanksgiving play in Jesus’ life? Can we really be thankful in all circumstances? And is it possible to overcome one’s anxiety and doubts with gratitude?

5 Prayer for Thanksgiving is a small collection of Scriptures and prayers from the ReFrame Prayer Ministry to help focus our hearts on the God who gives us abundant life.