Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, some of the Caribbean islands, Germany, Japan and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest from the preceding year. However, the real Thanksgiving, as celebrated in the United States, began after 102 passengers boarded a small ship called the Mayflower and left Plymouth, England, to start an exciting life in the New World, where they would be prosperous and able to freely practice their faith. They landed in Massachusetts and began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

According to The History Channel, the first winter in New England was freezing and treacherous. Most of the Pilgrims lived on the ship as a way to stay out of the cold, but they suffered exposure, scurvy and contagious diseases. Only half of the original passengers lived through the winter to see their first, glorious New England spring. They moved ashore to Plymouth and were greeted by Squanto, a Native American member of the Patuxet tribe. He taught the weakened Pilgrims how to grow corn, extract sap from the maple trees and catch fish in the rivers. He helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years.

In November 1621, while the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest burgeoned in the fields, Governor William Bradford organized a celebration feast and invited their Native American allies. Memorialized in time as America’s “first Thanksgiving,” the festival lasted for three days.

They ate deer, duck, fish, geese, lobster, clams, oysters, seals and swans according to what historians currently believe. Turkeys were not a common food at the time, so it is doubtful they ate one at the first Thanksgiving. They grew vegetables such as onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage and carrots. The plentiful corn they grew was shaved off the cob and made into cornmeal, which was then cooked into thick corn mush and sweetened with molasses. Potatoes did not exist in this region at the time, so there were no mashed potatoes at the feast. They did eat pumpkin and squash, but didn't have butter or flour OR an oven. Instead, they would hollow out the gourds, add milk, honey and spices, and place it among the ashes to make custard.

Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes and raspberries. They did have cranberries but did not eat them because of the tart taste. Instead, they used cranberries as a natural dye and it would be another 50 years before someone would think to add sugar to cranberries to make them palatable.

So, the first Thanksgiving had no turkey, no mashed potatoes and gravy, no pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce. It did have lobster, seal and swan, plentiful vegetables and fruits, corn mush and squash custard. It was celebrated with Native Americans, and the purpose of the celebration was to give thanks, much the same way as the purpose of Thanksgiving in this day and age. It proves that what you eat is not as important as the expression of gratitude.