Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center

From the Education Desk

It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is soon approaching, and that means Christmas is also almost upon us, which means that another year has gone by all too fast!

November 1^st brings the end to Daylight Savings Time much to my dismay, and November 11^th is Veterans Day. Stop by the museum for a fun time and take advantage of our military discounts. November 15-22 is American Education Week and Geography Awareness Week. We also celebrate Aviation Month, Family Stories Month and Peanut Butter Lover’s Month in November! Busy Time!!

Though many competing claims exist, the most familiar story of the first Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth Colony, in present day Massachusetts, in 1621.

The Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. This was in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops. Many Native American groups throughout the Americas organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America. The legacy of thanks, and particularly of the feast, have survived the centuries as people throughout the United States gather family, friends, and enormous amounts of food for their Thanksgiving meal.

Some of the foods which are served today at a Thanksgiving meal were not served at what we consider the first Pilgrim’s holiday. Foods such as sweet potatoes were not common and corn was kept dried out at this time of the year. The pilgrims had a recipe for stewed pumpkin but not for pumpkin pie. No cows were aboard the Mayflower, and it is assumed that the colonists used goat milk to make cheese.

The Senior Historian at Plimoth Plantation says that the first feast was a secular celebration with dancing, games and singing and not considered a “thanksgiving” in the pilgrims minds. It occurred in 1621 sometime between September 21 and November 11, lasted three days and was based on English harvest festivals. After this first harvest, Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving shared by the colonists and Indians. Gradually the custom of annually celebrating a thanksgiving after the harvest prevailed in New England. In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom, and by the middle of the 19^th century many other states had done the same. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date to the fourth Thursday of November and Congress made it official in 1941.

The Pilgrims were actually planning to go to the Hudson River region in New York State, but landed in Cape Cod instead due to treacherous seas which prevented them from venturing further south.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful holiday with your family and friends…

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough………… Oprah Winfrey

Regards,
Geri LeBold
Education Director
geri@rmdrc.com