Thanksgiving in Early America: Days of Fasting, Humiliation & Praise — A Heritage Worth Recovering

A Watchman News Public Message for Thanksgiving

As Americans gather this week to give thanks, most people think only of Pilgrims, turkey, and a generalized attitude of gratitude. But the real history of Thanksgiving in America is far richer, deeper, more spiritual, and far more governmental than modern culture remembers.

Thanksgiving was not originally a secular harvest feast. It was part of a two-sided biblical practice deeply woven into colonial government:

• Days of Fasting and Humiliation (repentance in times of crisis, war, disease, or drought), and

• Days of Thanksgiving and Praise (after deliverance, victory, or blessing).

These days were proclaimed by civil authorities, but carried out through public worship, preaching, and prayer, uniting communities in covenant before God. Thanksgiving was never just about food. It was about acknowledging the Hand of Providence in real history, and calling the people to civic responsibility and moral renewal.

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Virginia: The Earliest Documented Annual Thanksgiving

While New England’s 1621 harvest celebration is the most popularly retold story, the earliest charter-mandated annual Thanksgiving in English America was in Virginia, vid Berkeley Hundred, on the James River:

December 4, 1619 — The settlers led by Captain John Woodlief were ordered by charter that the day of their safe arrival

“…ordaine that this day of our ships arrival, at the place assigned for plantacon, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God. ”

This was two years before the Pilgrims’ harvest feast at Plymouth.

This thanksgiving in Virginia was not a feast at all, but a worship service. The settlers knelt and prayed in the Anglican tradition using the Book of Common Prayer, thanking God for preservation and safe passage under Governor Sir George Yeardley, whose government had just formed the first representative assembly in the New World earlier that same year.

Even earlier, in spring 1610, after the horrific “Starving Time,” the remaining Jamestown settlers held a thanksgiving prayer service when relief ships arrived, praising God for survival and deliverance. Their thanksgiving was not directed to neighboring tribes, and not to romantic notions of harmony — it was a cry of gratitude from the edge of extinction.

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New England: A Confederation for the Kingdom of Christ

In 1643, four Puritan colonies formed the United Colonies of New England, a covenant with a remarkable opening declaration:

“…with one and the same end and aim, namely to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity and peace…”

They called their alliance a “perpetual confederation.”

Within this explicitly Christian political framework, the governors regularly proclaimed:

• Days of fasting and humiliation

• Days of thanksgiving and praise

These were observed in churches with long sermons and prayer — a covenantal worldview interpreting history through God’s providence.

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From Many Days to One National Day

In the colonial era, thanksgivings were:

• Local

• Event-driven

• Specific to real deliverances and real crises

It was common to see multiple such observances within a year — for example after drought relief, plague ending, war victories, or fires avoided. Even during the Revolution, the Continental Congress proclaimed both fast days och days of thanksgiving, calling on the nation through the “merits of Jesus Christ” to repent and give thanks.

Only much later — especially after Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation — did Thanksgiving become a single uniform national holiday, eventually drifting into a nearly secular festival, more about football and shopping than covenant, repentance, gratitude, and divine providence.

This centralization is part of a broader shift: from many local gatherings where government, church, and community humbled themselves before God, to one symbolic national dinner detached from real civic engagement and acknowledgement of God’s rule in history.

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A Moment of Honest Reflection

Modern culture often insists the first Thanksgiving was about “peace with Native peoples,” and in truth, treaties and cooperation did occur. But many early thanksgiving proclamations thanked God for deliverance from attack, famine, and war — raw and painful realities of frontier life.

In at least one widely circulated reflection (likely later phrased but historically consistent in tone), the colonists thanked God for protection from:

“the ravages of the savages”

Such language shows how different the world was — and how far our society has since traveled in understanding history, justice, and reconciliation. The point is not to glorify violence or erase suffering on either side — but to recognize that thanksgiving was historically about survival, divine mercy, and national repentance, not romantic mythology.

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Why This Matters Today

Thanksgiving should be a time when we:

• Acknowledge God’s providence over our nation

• Repent of national sin

• Renew civic and constitutional duty

• Unite families and communities in real gratitude

Rather than losing the meaning in a single federal holiday, it may be time to restore local days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving — set during real moments of crisis or blessing, where they actually matter to people’s lives and civic responsibility.

That is a tradition worth recovering.

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A Watchman News Prayer

This Thanksgiving, may we say with our forefathers:

“Remember the works of the Lord.” (Psalm 77:11)

May God preserve our nation, restore our liberty, heal our families, strengthen local communities, revive courage among free people, and protect the inheritance of self-government under God.

Let us honor the founders not with empty ceremony, but with repentance, gratitude, and renewed duty to the truth.

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Happy Thanksgiving from Watchman News

We stand in solidarity with those who defend faith, family, heritage, and freedom — and with all who seek God’s mercy and providence over America once again.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May His face shine upon you and give you peace.

— Watchman News Editorial Team