The Truth Behind ‘Thanksgiving’
23rd November 2015
Despite much of the bloviation you hear about the origins of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, it’s origin is very simple — it was the traditional English harvest feast of Martinmas, the feast day of St Martin of Tours, held traditionally on November 11 each year. (The Puritans didn’t call it Martinmas, of course, because saints’ days were ‘papist’.)
‘But wait’, I hear you say. ‘Thanksgiving isn’t on the 11th.’ Of course not. In the 1600’s, England was on a Julian calendar; it didn’t start using the ‘papist’ Gregorian calendar until 1752, more than a century after the first ‘Thanksgiving’ feast. The key thing to know about the Julian calendar is that it’s a number of days behind the Gregorian calendar; by 2015 this difference is 13 days. So in order to know what Julian date is for November 11, you have to add 13 days to the Gregorian date. I’ll leave you to do the math.