Most everyone knows the story of the first Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated an abundant harvest with a three-day feast prepared by four Pilgrim women and two teenage girls. Members of the Wampanoag tribe, including their chief Massasoit, sat side-by-side with the new European settlers in friendship to share the fruits of the season. The year was 1621 and Windham would have been a remote part of what would become the Massachusetts Bay colony.

When Windham’s town fathers first settled here in the 1760s, they would probably have been told stories of that feast and would possibly have had harvest dinners of their own. These celebrations would not be held on a specific day of the year, however, but instead would commemorate significant events like the ending of a drought, a victory in battle or a bountiful growing season.

The menu would consist of seasonal crops, so if the festivities were held around this time of year, the meal would probably include some sort of fowl (and turkey was abundant back then), venison and fish. Local vegetables like onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, squash and carrots would have rounded out the fare. Apples and plums were popular for pies and hollowed-out pumpkins, roasted and filled with milk, honey and spices, would create a delightful dessert custard.

It wasn’t until 1777 that the 13 colonies celebrated a specific Thanksgiving Day, and Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until 1789 when President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 26, to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to God for the formation of the new nation and honor  its constitution.

The holiday had no specific date until after the Civil War had broken out. Author and newspaper editor Sarah Josepha Hale approached President Abraham Lincoln asking him to consider making Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, a national festival to be observed by all people in the United States. Although she had approached other presidents prior to Lincoln’s election, it was he who found Hale’s argument so compelling that on Oct. 3, 1863, when the nation was in the midst of the Civil War, he issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. It declared that the last Thursday in November would be an annual “day of thanks and praise.” It was his hope that this holiday would be a unifying day for the nation, bringing people together during a time when the country was ravaged by war.

For the next 75 years, here in Windham as in the rest of the country, the tradition of celebrating the holiday on the last Thursday of the month continued. But then came the Great Depression and in 1939, the holiday was to fall on Nov. 30. Believing most people did the bulk of their Christmas shopping between Thanksgiving and Dec. 25,  major retailers across the country petitioned President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move the date up a week to allow people more shopping time. The President agreed and moved the date of Thanksgiving to Nov. 23.

This was not popular with everyone in the country, however. Calendars were now incorrect, school vacations and test dates would have to be changed and football games would need to be rescheduled. The governors of 23 states did not respect the president’s decision and held the holiday on Nov. 30 as originally planned. Maine was one of those states.

In 1940, President Roosevelt again proclaimed the next-to-the-last Thursday of the month the official date of Thanksgiving. Opponents were now calling the policy Franksgiving, and it had still not found favor in the New England states. Residents of our town would have been celebrating Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month, doing so with citizens of only 16 other states.

Since Thanksgiving was initially designed by Lincoln to be a unifying holiday, Congress decided in 1941 to pass a law declaring that Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month of November. With the law in place, the country would now celebrate Thanksgiving on the same day nationwide.

During WWII, there were some lean Thanksgivings. Things like sugar, butter and spices were being rationed, and there also was a turkey shortage because so many turkeys were being sent overseas to the troops. And with gas rationing in place, it became harder for families to get together, especially if they were a good distance apart.

Luckily for many of us, Thanksgiving these days is full of abundance. We can eat ourselves silly, enjoy happy times with our families and watch football games on TV to our heart’s content. We indeed have a lot to be thankful for, so be sure you count all your many blessings when you celebrate this Thanksgiving Day.

Haley Pal is a Windham resident and an active member of the Windham Historical Society.