Thanksgiving is the holiday most often described as “just a family meal”, which is why many Muslims ask about it. This page sets out what historians say about where it came from, which popular stories are false, what its customs are tied to, and what scholars have said about it. It is education, not an attack on anyone. Most people who keep it today see a day of family, food and gratitude, and we do not question their intentions. The question here is only what the religion asks of a Muslim, and on that point we also say plainly where scholars differ.
Eight origins and milestones are usually given. Each card carries a verdict tag, the facts as the sources give them, and a note where the sources say a claim needs correcting or caution.
After the colony’s first harvest, the surviving Mayflower colonists held a harvest celebration. Edward Winslow described it in a letter dated 11 December 1621, published in London in 1622: “our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together… at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation…” (modern spelling, as given by Pilgrim Hall).
Pilgrim Hall counts two, and only two, primary sources for autumn 1621: Winslow and William Bradford. Bradford’s history describes that autumn’s abundance (fish, waterfowl, “great store of wild turkeys”, venison, corn) but does not describe the feast itself. Both writers were English, so the Wampanoag side is not recorded in these sources.
Native nations had their own cycles of thanks long before the Pilgrims arrived. Pilgrim Hall notes that the Wampanoag expressed thankfulness to the Creator on a daily basis. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy says the Haudenosaunee keep 13 ceremonies through the year, “most” of them a way of expressing thanks to the people, the natural world, the spirit world and the creator. The list includes a Strawberry Ceremony, a Green Corn ceremony in mid-August and a four-day Harvest ceremony in mid-October, each opened and closed with prayer. For the Cherokee, the Green Corn ceremony was the most important ceremony, a time of purification and renewal that honored Selu, the Corn Woman, with fasting and reconciliation before the new corn was eaten.
In Puritan New England a “Day of Thanksgiving” was a religious observance called by a church leader after a special act of Providence. Pilgrim Hall says these days were purely religious, and the whole day would be spent in church, with no feasting or amusements. The first recorded one at Plymouth was in 1623, proclaimed by Bradford as a drought ended and the ship Anne was sighted (Pilgrim Hall also describes it as a response to a providential rainfall). Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay proclaimed one in 1631 when a ship thought lost arrived with food. On 15 November 1636 Plymouth passed a law allowing its governor and assistants to “command solemn days of humiliation by fasting, etc., and also for thanksgiving as occasion shall be offered”. In 1668 Plymouth proclaimed its first thanksgiving for the general blessings of the year.
On 8 September 1565 Pedro Menendez de Avilés landed at the site of St. Augustine. The National Park Service says the party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, led by Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, and that Menendez then invited the Timucua (the Seloy) to share a meal. The Park Service reconstructs the menu as Spanish rations with possible local foods, which is an inference; no menu survives.
On 30 April 1598 Juan de Oñate’s expedition reached the Rio Grande near today’s San Elizario after crossing the Chihuahuan Desert. Texas sources describe a thanksgiving Mass and feast, followed by a ceremony in which Oñate read “La Toma”, claiming the river’s lands for King Philip II of Spain.
The Virginia Company gave Captain John Woodlief written instructions, dated 4 September 1619, for settlers sailing to Berkeley Hundred on the James River. They were to mark the day of their arrival in Virginia as a day of thanksgiving. National Geographic quotes the wording as “yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God” (given in modern spelling; the sources we read differ on the original spelling). The settlers arrived on 4 December 1619.
The settlement was destroyed in the 1622 attack.
The Continental Congress proclaimed national days of thanksgiving between 1777 and 1784. On 28 September 1789 the first Federal Congress asked the President to recommend a day of thanksgiving, and Washington named Thursday, 26 November 1789. After that, presidents proclaimed thanksgivings irregularly, and by the 1840s most states observed one on dates that varied widely.
Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, began an editorial campaign for a national annual Thanksgiving in 1846. She hoped it would strengthen family ties and bring unity and moral strength. She wrote to Lincoln on 28 September 1863. On 3 October 1863, Lincoln proclaimed it for the last Thursday of November, calling it “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens”. The text speaks of “the gracious gifts of the Most High God” and asks the people to pray “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience”. Every president since has issued an annual proclamation. After the Civil War, Hale was among the first popular writers to tie the holiday to Plymouth.
In 1939 the last Thursday of November fell on the 30th. To lengthen the Christmas shopping season, President Roosevelt moved the holiday to the second-to-last Thursday. According to the National Archives, 32 states followed and 16 refused, so for two years the country kept two Thanksgivings. Congress ended this: the House voted on 6 October 1941 for the last Thursday, the Senate amended it to the fourth Thursday on 9 December, and Roosevelt signed it on 26 December 1941.
Canada’s History says that in 1578 the English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew gave thanks and held Communion on safe arrival, and that in 1606 Champlain’s settlers held feasts with the Mi’kmaq under the Order of Good Cheer. A national day of thanksgiving was declared for 6 November 1879, and on 31 January 1957 Parliament fixed the second Monday of October. It describes the day as “a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed”.
Some of what people repeat about Thanksgiving, in schoolbooks and online alike, does not survive the evidence. A Muslim does not need any of these stories to explain why the holiday is not neutral.
The alliance was real. In March 1621 the Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin (called Massasoit) and Plymouth agreed a treaty of mutual aid: neither side would harm the other, and each would help the other if attacked. It was an alliance between two peoples with their own interests, and it was made when the Wampanoag had been devastated by epidemic and wanted allies. Pilgrim Hall says the balance of power in 1621 favored the Wampanoag. Ousamequin died by 1661. In 1675 his son Metacom (“King Philip”) led an uprising, and Pilgrim Hall dates King Philip’s War from June 1675 to Metacom’s death in 1676.
The Pilgrims did not call the 1621 event a thanksgiving. To them a day of thanksgiving was a religious day of prayer. It was a one-time event, with no proclamation, and nothing in the sources suggests that the colonists meant to repeat it. The yearly custom grew up in New England from three traditions (the harvest festival, the church day and civic thanksgivings) and was later given a Pilgrim origin story. Hale was one of the first popular writers to link the holiday to Plymouth, after the Civil War.
In May 1637 colonial forces and their allies attacked the Pequot fort at Mystic. Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay did call a day of thanksgiving afterwards (his journal records one in June 1637), so the first half of the claim is true. But colonial authorities called such days often, usually for a victory or a delivery, and Snopes and historians say that this one is not the origin of the harvest tradition or of Lincoln’s 1863 holiday.
Winslow names two foods: wildfowl and venison (five deer, brought by the Wampanoag). Bradford says wild turkeys were plentiful that autumn, so turkey is probable but is not stated for the feast. Corn was available for bread and porridge. There was no pumpkin pie because the colony lacked the butter and wheat flour for pastry, though pumpkins may have been cooked in other ways. Sugar-sweetened cranberry sauce recipes appear about 50 years later. Potatoes were not part of the meal either.
The black-and-white buckled costume is a later, largely 19th-century image. Plimoth Patuxet says everyday Pilgrim clothing was often in earthy colors such as brown, green, russet and blue, with darker clothing for formal occasions, and that buckles were not common in the period.
The 1621 feast was, by Pilgrim Hall’s account, a secular harvest festival, though shaped by the Pilgrims’ knowledge of Scripture. But the national holiday began in proclamations that call on God: Lincoln’s text speaks of “the Most High God”, and Canada’s Parliament describes the day as one of thanksgiving “to almighty God”. Neither word, “secular” or “Christian”, describes the whole story. This is why scholars disagree about it, as the section on the Islamic position shows.
Since 1970 some Native people and supporters have marked Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning. Pilgrim Hall explains that it began at Plymouth in 1970, when Frank “Wamsutta” James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag, refused to read a revised speech and instead spoke on Cole’s Hill. Pilgrim Hall also notes that the Wampanoag gave thanks to the Creator daily, long before 1621.
The accurate history is already enough. Every documented origin is either a Christian religious observance (a Puritan day of prayer, a Catholic thanksgiving Mass, Lincoln’s proclamation to “the Most High God”) or an Indigenous ceremonial cycle of thanks. The one strand historians call secular, the 1621 harvest feast, was still shaped by the colonists’ faith. So the holiday is not neutral, even though many who keep it today see only a family meal. That does not require believing the darker myths. It requires only the history above.
A short guide to the people most often named in the story, and what the sources actually say about each.
Born at Patuxet, the village where Plymouth was built. In 1614 Thomas Hunt kidnapped him and others, and took them to Málaga, Spain; Hunt sold some of the captives. Tisquantum later reached London and lived with the merchant John Slany. He returned in 1619 and found Patuxet emptied by epidemic. Bradford describes him as an interpreter and guide who showed the colonists how to plant corn and where to take fish.
Pilgrim Hall adds that he also manipulated translations for his own advantage and lost the favor of Ousamequin. Winslow’s account of the feast does not mention him.
ThemeA captive who became an interpreter.
“Massasoit” is a title, meaning “great leader”; his name was Ousamequin. He made the March 1621 treaty with Plymouth, and Winslow says he came to the feast with about ninety men and that they killed five deer. He lived at Sowams, in present-day Rhode Island.
ThemeA political alliance, not simple friendship.
Elected governor after John Carver died in 1621, and re-elected to the office several times. He began Of Plimoth Plantation in 1630, the principal account of the colony. Pilgrim Hall credits him with proclaiming the religious Day of Thanksgiving of 1623.
Winslow says only that “our governor sent four men on fowling”. Bradford’s role in organizing the whole 1621 event is an inference, and his own history does not describe the feast.
ThemeThanks to God for specific mercies.
His letter of 11 December 1621, published in Mourt’s Relation in 1622, is the main eyewitness account of the 1621 feast: the fowling, the ninety men, the five deer, “by the goodness of God”. It is one of only two primary sources.
ThemeA thankful report, not a thanksgiving.
Author of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and editor of a widely read magazine. She began her campaign for a national Thanksgiving in 1846, about 17 years before Lincoln’s proclamation, and wrote to him on 28 September 1863. She is often called the “Mother of Thanksgiving”.
The National Park Service also counts a “36-year quest” back to essays from 1827. Our 17-year figure follows Pilgrim Hall.
ThemeA campaign for national unity and family ties.
He proclaimed the last Thursday of November as “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens”. The text was written by Secretary of State Seward, and Lincoln issued nine such proclamations during the war. Every president since has issued one each year.
ThemeThanks to the Most High, with penitence.
Quran quotations are the Sahih International translation. Hadith are quoted in English as shown on sunnah.com, with the grading given there. Where scholars differ, we say so.
Every documented origin of Thanksgiving is either a Christian religious observance (the Puritan day of prayer, the Catholic thanksgiving Mass, Lincoln’s call to give thanks to “the Most High God”) or an Indigenous ceremonial cycle. The 1621 harvest feast is the one strand that historians call secular, and it too was shaped by the colonists’ faith. A Muslim who gives thanks to Allah every day, and who thanks the people who help him, has no need of a day that was set up to give thanks to a different understanding of God.
Scholars have given different answers. Some forbid taking part in Thanksgiving. Others allow an ordinary family meal if it is not treated as a religious festival. We set out both fairly. Several famous fatwas on “the festivals of non-Muslims” do not mention Thanksgiving by name; whether Thanksgiving counts as such a festival is the very point on which scholars differ.
A short note on other communities that hold to God’s law. We report what their own sources say, and we do not adopt their reasons.
Orthodox rabbis disagree, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled differently across four responsa (Igrot Moshe, Even HaEzer 2:13; Orach Chayim 5:20; Yoreh De’ah 4:11 and 4:12). In 1963 he wrote that it is not forbidden by law but that a pious person should be stringent; in 1981 he called a festive Thanksgiving meal prohibited in one responsum and allowed an optional, non-fixed meal in another, and Ohr Somayach summarizes that he still preferred not to hold a Thanksgiving celebration.
Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner is quoted as forbidding an annual Thanksgiving as a gentile holiday, as did Rabbi Menashe Klein and Rabbi Avigdor Miller, while Rabbi Eliezer Silver and Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik are reported to have allowed eating turkey that day. Reform sources encourage marking Thanksgiving with Jewish values.
Most Christians keep Thanksgiving, and its American form grew out of Christian days of thanks. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not: their site lists it among holidays “rooted in ancient harvest celebrations that honored various gods”, and says Witnesses do not take part in such holidays.
As a historical example, the Puritans of Massachusetts fined anyone “observing any such day as Christmas” from 1659 until the law was repealed in 1681, because Christmas had no basis in Scripture. The same Puritans called days of thanksgiving as events warranted, not on a fixed date. This describes a past community, not Christians today.