 | |
Welcome to Celtnet's Thanksgiving Recipes Page — This page details the origins of Thanksgiving celebrations from it's inception as an European harvest festival, thorugh a Christian celebration of the bounty of the year's harvest to a more general celebration of thanks for the year's bounties. Today, Thanksgiving is most well known as a holiday in the Unitied States of America, though a similar holiday is also held in Canada, Grenada and Liberia.
| Main Course Recipes | Stuffings and Gravies | Accompaniments |
| Thanksgiving Desserts and Pies | Snacks and Candies | Other Dishes |
Thanksgiving ultimately owes its origins to various pagan harvest festivals that were subsumed by the Christian church and are often celebrated on the second Sunday of October (traditionally the end of harvest time in the Northern Hemisphere).
These, however, are religious observances, most commonly practiced in Wales (Diolchgarwch) and the Netherlands (as many of the Pilgrims who would end up at the Plymouth Plantation had resided in the city of Leiden from 1609–1620).
Thanksgiving with ceremonies and accompanying holidays is celebrated in the United States of America (most notably), Canada, Grenada in the Caribbean and Liberia in West Africa.
Primarily, thanksgiving is a holiday to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to god, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships. Traditionally, it has been a time to give thanks to god for a bountiful harvest.
Today, in the United States, Thanksgiving Day falls on the fourth Thursday of November. In Canada it is celebrated on the second Monday in October. In Grenada it is celebrated on October 25th and in Liberia it is celebrated on the first Thursday of November.
The precise historical origin of the holiday is disputed. Although Americans commonly believe that the first Thanksgiving happened in 1621, at Plymouth Plantation, in Massachusetts, there is strong evidence for earlier celebrations in Canada (1578) and by Spanish explorers in Florida (1565). But the various contenders for the 'First Thanksgiving' include:
In the United States
Massachusetts
While not the first thanksgiving of any sort on the continent, the traditional origin of modern Thanksgiving in the United States is generally regarded to be the celebration that occurred at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in Massachusetts in 1621. This celebration occurred early in the history of what would become one of the original Thirteen Colonies that later were to become the United States. This Thanksgiving was modeled after harvest festivals that were commonplace in Europe at the time. According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.
Florida
Author and teacher Robyn Gioia and Michael Gannon of the University of Florida have argued that the earliest attested "thanksgiving" celebration in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida.
Virginia
A day of thanksgiving was codified in the founding charter of Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia in 1619.
In Canada
Newfoundland
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. Frobisher's Thanksgiving celebration was not for harvest, but for homecoming. He had safely returned from a search for the Northwest Passage, having avoiding the later fate of Henry Hudson and Sir John Franklin. In the year 1578, Frobisher held a formal ceremony in Newfoundland to give thanks for surviving the long journey.
New France
French settlers who came to New France with explorer Samuel de Champlain in the early 17th century also took to celebrating their successful harvests. They even shared their food with the indigenous people of the area as well as setting up what became known as the "Order of Good Cheer."
In the United States: During the American Revolutionary War the Continental Congress appointed one or more thanksgiving days each year, each time recommending to the executives of the various states the observance of these days in their states. The First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving was given by the Continental Congress in 1777. As President, on October 3, 1789, George Washington made the following proclamation and created the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America. George Washington again proclaimed a Thanksgiving in 1795.
President John Adams declared Thanksgivings in 1798 and 1799. No Thanksgiving proclamations were issued by Thomas Jefferson but James Madison renewed the tradition in 1814, in response to resolutions of Congress, at the close of the War of 1812. Madison also declared the holiday twice in 1815; however, none of these were celebrated in autumn.
In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863 and since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln's successors as president followed his example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with this tradition. November had five Thursdays that year (instead of the usual four), and Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. In 1940 and 1941, years in which November had four Thursdays, he declared the third one as Thanksgiving.
On October 6, 1941, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution fixing the traditional last-Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942. However, in December of that year the Senate passed an amendment to the resolution that split the difference by requiring that Thanksgiving be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes (less frequently) the next to last. On December 26, 1941 President Roosevelt signed this bill, for the first time making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal law.
The mainstay of the Thanksgiving holiday is the thanksgiving dinner where families come together to celebrate. The foods served are still based on those of what is termed the 'first thanksgiving'. According to what traditionally is known as 'The First Thanksgiving', the 1621 feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony contained turkey, waterfowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. William Bradford noted that, "besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many". Many of the foods that were included in that feast (except, notably, the seafood) have since gone on to become staples of the modern Thanksgiving dinner.
The use of the turkey in the USA for Thanksgiving precedes Lincoln's nationalization of the holiday in 1863. Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that no 'Citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day', and many of the Founding Fathers (particularly Benjamin Franklin) had high regard for the wild turkey as an American icon, but turkey was uncommon as Thanksgiving fare until after 1800. By 1857, turkey had become part of the traditional dinner in New England.
Because, these days, turkey is the most common main dish of a Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving is sometimes colloquially called 'turkey day'. However, foods other than turkey are sometimes served as the main dish for a Thanksgiving dinner. Goose and duck, foods which were traditional European centerpieces of Christmas dinners before being displaced, are now sometimes served in place of the Thanksgiving turkey. Sometimes, fowl native to the region where the meal is taking place is used. In a few areas of the West Coast of the United States, Dungeness crab is common as an alternate main dish, as crab season starts in early November. Similarly, Thanksgiving falls within deer hunting season in the Northeastern United States, which encourages the use of venison as a centerpiece. Sometimes a variant recipe for cooking turkey is used; for example, a Chinese recipe for goose could be used on the similarly-sized American bird.
Below are some traditional and more unusual recipes for the main dish. I have also included recipes for brining the bird prior to roasting as this makes the meat more succulent.
Many other foods are served alongside the main dish — so many that, because of the amount of food, the Thanksgiving meal is sometimes served midday or early afternoon to make time for all the eating, and preparation may begin at dawn or on days prior.
Traditional Thanksgiving foods are sometimes specific to the day, and although some of the foods might be seen at any semi-formal meal in the United States, the meal often has something of a ritual or traditional quality. Many Americans would say it is 'incomplete' without cranberry sauce; stuffing or dressing; and gravy. Other commonly served dishes include winter squash; yams (sweet potatoes); mashed potatoes or rice (in the South and among Asians); dumplings; corn on the cob or hominy; deviled eggs; green beans or green bean casserole; sauerkraut (among those in the Mid-Atlantic; especially Baltimore), peas and carrots, bread rolls, cornbread (in the south and parts of New England), or biscuits, rutabagas (swedes) or turnips; and a salad. For dessert, various pies are often served, particularly apple pie, mincemeat pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate meringue pie and pecan pie, with the last four being particularly American.
Below are listed a range of typical Thanksgiving stuffings (dressings), sauces and graives:
Here you will find a typical range of accompaniments for the Thanksgiving meal:
Here you will find a typical pies and desserts for the Thanksgiving meal:
Here you will find a typical candies and snacks to give the kids as a Thanksgiving treat:
| Indian Corn |
There are also non-traditional regional differences as to the stuffing or dressing traditionally served with the turkey. Southerners generally make their dressing from cornbread, while those in other parts of the country make stuffing from white or wheat bread as the base. One or several of the following may be added to the dressing/stuffing: oysters, apples, chestnuts, raisins, celery and/or other vegetables, sausages or the turkey's giblets. The traditional Canadian version has bread cubes, sage, onion and celery. Rice is also sometimes used instead of bread in Canada.
Other non-traditional dishes reflect the region or cultural background of those who have come together for the meal. For example, many African Americans and Southerners serve baked macaroni and cheese and collard greens,along with Chitterlings and sweet potato pie. while some Italian-Americans often have lasagne on the table and Ashkenazi Jews may serve noodle kugel, a sweet dessert pudding.
This site's alphabetical list of Thanksgiving recipes follows (limited to 200 recipes per page). There are 155 recipes in total:
