ES
Emily Sakal
  • History
  • Class of 2018
  • Phoenixville, PA

Emily Sakal Researches True Origins of Thanksgiving

2017 Nov 16

Emily Sakal, a senior history major from Phoenixville, Pa., conducted research to find the validity of whether or not Thanksgiving truly began with the Pilgrims.

Sakal's area of focus was history, more specifically "How Thanksgiving has been celebrated in our history in different regions and at different times". The research focused on the historical purpose of Thanksgiving as a national celebration was a means to celebrate our national creed of equality, to ask forgiveness for our national sin of slavery. However, this is drastically different from what American society is accustom, where it symbolizes the meal between Pilgrims and Indians.

Through extensive research, she discovered that the Pilgrim Thanksgiving was a regional tradition in New England, not a national one. Sakal's research took her to the Library of Congress. After diving into the history of Thanksgiving Day Presidential proclamations it became evident that Presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln never mentioned Pilgrims. Until Teddy Roosevelt's 1905 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation linked Pilgrims to the origins of the nation.

In regards to the research, she states that Lincoln's proclamation of Thanksgiving on November 6, 1863 was to celebrate victory and to bring Americans together behind a unified effort. The modern American Thanksgiving holiday dates to Abraham Lincoln and to the Civil War. Its strongest historical link is not to the Pilgrims, but to the goals named in the Declaration of Independence, that Lincoln named in the Gettysburg Address, and that transformed our Constitution in the 14th Amendment. The historical purpose of Thanksgiving as a national celebration was to celebrate our national creed of equality, to ask forgiveness for our national sin of slavery and steel ourselves as a people to the task of atoning for it.

Consequently, use this Thanksgiving to let society rededicate ourselves to this to this national holiday's original goals as named in the Declaration of Independence, at Gettysburg, and enshrined in the 14th amendment to the Constitution.

She concluded, "We are still a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, that's worth giving thanks for".

Dr. Andrew B. Arnold, department professor & Chair of History, assisted Sakal during the research process. However, he elaborated how Sakal weeded through several obstacles before the true origins of Thanksgiving surfaced.

The KU BEARS program is an excellent opportunity to do funded research that otherwise wouldn't be affordable to the average college student.

The purpose of the KU BEARS program is to support faculty/student research pairs over the summer. The goals are twofold: to develop the necessary skills set of undergraduate students to help them become student researchers and to provide faculty members with paid student research assistants.