Long life | 3 December 2015

I have always found Thanksgiving, which was celebrated in the United States last week, the most agreeable and least stressful of holidays. It involves no present-giving, so it is almost free of commercialism and the anxieties associated with shopping; and it has no religious or political connotations, which means it can be enjoyed in equal measure by Americans of every kind. Christmas, on the other hand, despite all the efforts made in America to play down its religious origins, retains an element of exclusivity about it: if you are not a Christian, it is not really your day. Thanksgiving, with its emphasis not only on gratitude but also on goodwill and generosity towards everyone, yet without the divisive intrusion of religion, is perhaps the ideal family festival for the modern world.

It is a holiday with rather confused origins. It was reputedly first celebrated by the Puritan settlers, who in 1621 landed in the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, to give thanks for the harvest they reaped after their ferocious first winter on American soil. After that, it was observed sporadically on different dates in different states until Abraham Lincoln, without reference to the Pilgrim Fathers, decided in 1863 to declare the last Thursday in November a national day of thanks for his Civil War victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. It was an odd time to be giving thanks. The Union was bloodily divided and New York City was in the throes of draft riots. But the holiday survived and gradually rediscovered its supposed Pilgrim roots.

It is said that the Pilgrims ate four wild turkeys at their first Thanksgiving feast. Last week Americans ate more than 50 million farm-fattened ones. But the ‘Thanksgiving turkey’ is another tradition of quite recent origin, thanks largely to brilliant marketing by American turkey farmers.