Is Thanksgiving a Christian holiday? 1621, Lincoln’s proclamation and what the Bible says about giving thanks

What happened in 1621

Almost everything we know about the meal now called the “First Thanksgiving” comes from one paragraph. Edward Winslow, one of the Plymouth settlers, wrote it in a letter dated December 11, 1621, printed in London in 1622 in the book known as Mourt’s Relation. He reports that, “God be praised,” the colony had a good crop of Indian corn. Then, the harvest gathered, the governor sent four men out fowling so that the colonists might “rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.” Over several days of feasting and recreation, “many of the Indians” came, “and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.” The Wampanoag men went out and killed five deer, which they gave to the governor, the captain and others. Winslow adds that “by the goodness of God, we are so far from want” that he wishes his friend could share their plenty. (Quotations from Caleb Johnson’s modern-spelling transcription of the 1622 printing.)

The only other early account, William Bradford’s history Of Plimoth Plantation, says that autumn the colonists began to gather in “yᵉ small harvest they had”, and that besides waterfowl “ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison” (1898 Massachusetts edition, original spelling). Neither writer calls the 1621 event a thanksgiving.

That matters, because for these settlers a “day of thanksgiving” meant something specific: a day of worship, usually with sermons and prayer, called for a particular mercy of God. Bradford records one in 1623. After a drought from May to mid-July, the colony “sett a parte a solemne day of humilliation, to seek yᵉ Lord by humble & fervente prayer”; rain followed that evening, the harvest recovered, and “they also sett aparte a day of thanksgiveing.” The 1621 meal looks like an English harvest celebration with guests; the 1623 day looks like the Puritan religious thanksgiving. Today’s holiday blends the two.

The Puritans’ own rule shows why a fixed yearly Thanksgiving is something new. The Westminster Assembly’s Directory for the Public Worship of God (1645), the worship standard of English and Scottish Presbyterians, says that “Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.” It goes straight on: “Nevertheless, it is lawful and necessary, upon special emergent occasions, to separate a day or days for publick fasting or thanksgiving.” In other words, the tradition behind Thanksgiving rejected annual holy days but required days of thanks when God’s providence gave a reason. In time, New England colonies turned those occasional days into a regular autumn custom, and the nation made it annual.

Washington, Lincoln and the fourth Thursday

The first national Thanksgiving under the Constitution fell on the same date as this year’s. On October 3, 1789, at the request of Congress, President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789, a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, “to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” It was a one-time proclamation, not a permanent holiday; for decades after, states set their own days.

The holiday became national during the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, had campaigned for a fixed national Thanksgiving for about fifteen years, and on September 28, 1863, she wrote to Lincoln asking for it. Lincoln’s proclamation is dated October 3, 1863, exactly seventy-four years after Washington’s; according to Lincoln’s secretary John Nicolay, Secretary of State William Seward wrote it. It invites Americans to keep “the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

The proclamation is a theological document. It lists the year’s blessings in the middle of a war, then insists: “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” And it asks for more than gratitude: Americans are to give thanks “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience,” and to commend to God’s care “all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife,” praying for the healing of the nation.

After Lincoln, presidents for the most part proclaimed the last Thursday of November. In 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it a week earlier, setting off a dispute in which some states kept the old date. Congress settled it with a joint resolution fixing the fourth Thursday of November; Roosevelt signed it on December 26, 1941, and it took effect the next year (National Archives).

What the Bible says about giving thanks

The Bible has no Thanksgiving Day, but it has a great deal to say about thanksgiving. Scripture below is from the Berean Standard Bible unless marked; the explanations are our own.

Psalm 100 — thanks as worship. Its heading in the BSB is “A Psalm of thanksgiving”, and it calls “all the earth” to worship: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and bless His name” (Psalm 100:4). The reason comes last: “For the LORD is good, and His loving devotion endures forever” (100:5). Thanks here is not a mood but an act of worship, and it is addressed to someone. (The whole psalm, in the King James Version, is on our page Make a Joyful Noise (Psalm 100).)

Luke 17:11–19 — the one who came back. Ten men with leprosy ask Jesus for mercy; he sends them to the priests, and all ten are cleansed on the way. Only one “came back, praising God in a loud voice,” and fell at Jesus’ feet “in thanksgiving to Him — and he was a Samaritan” (17:15–16). Jesus asks, “Were not all ten cleansed? … Where then are the other nine?”, and calls the man “this foreigner” (17:17–18). This is the Gospel reading for Thanksgiving Day 2026 in the Revised Common Lectionary.

¹¹ And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. ¹² And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: ¹³ And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. ¹⁴ And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. ¹⁵ And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, ¹⁶ And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷ And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? ¹⁸ There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. ¹⁹ And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

Two things in the story are easy to miss. The nine were not punished; they were healed and simply did not return, so the passage is about what thanks reveals, not a threat. And the one who gave thanks was the outsider, a Samaritan among Jews. Luke’s Greek word for his “giving thanks” is eucharisteō (Strong’s G2168), the root of the Christian word Eucharist.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 — “in”, not “for”. “Give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18). The KJV, WEB and ASV say “in every thing” or “in everything”. Paul asks for thanks in every situation, which is different from thanking God for every evil that happens. (Ephesians 5:20 does say “for everything”; read in context, it is about a life of worship “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”, Ephesians 5:18–20.)

Deuteronomy 8 and 16 — the harvest and the danger of plenty. “When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you” (Deuteronomy 8:10). The next verses warn that full tables and growing wealth make people proud, until they say, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me” (8:17). Israel’s autumn harvest feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, was to include “the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you” (Deuteronomy 16:13–15). This is the reading the Revised Common Lectionary gives for Thanksgiving 2026 (Deuteronomy 8:7–18), and it is close to the spirit of Lincoln’s call to penitence.

Romans 14:5–6 — keeping a day “to the Lord”. “One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes a special day does so to the Lord.” Paul is writing about the Jewish calendar, not American holidays, but his principle covers this one: a Christian may keep a day of thanks or not, as long as either is done to the Lord.

What the Bible does not say. No passage commands an annual national thanksgiving day, and none of these texts is about America, 1621 or a particular meal. The New Testament’s pattern is thanks at every meal (1 Timothy 4:4–5: what “is received with thanksgiving” is “sanctified by the word of God and prayer”) and thanks “for everyone—for kings and all those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1–2). A yearly holiday is a good use of that freedom, not a requirement.

Bible verses for Thanksgiving

Here are eight passages to read on the day, each with its setting, because some come from a lost harvest or from a writer in chains, and that changes how they sound at a full table. The text is the Berean Standard Bible.

Six of the eight come from the readings churches hear on Thanksgiving Day. The Revised Common Lectionary, followed by Lutheran and other churches, gives four readings for the day on a three-year cycle. Two of this year’s four, Deuteronomy 8 and Luke 17, are covered above. Catholic Thanksgiving Day Masses have their own readings (see How the churches keep it).

Psalm 65:9–13

The end of a psalm of David, which follows the farming year from rain to harvest. The harvest is described as something God does: he waters the land, softens it with showers and crowns the year.

⁹ You attend to the earth and water it; with abundance You enrich it. The streams of God are full of water, for You prepare our grain by providing for the earth. ¹⁰ You soak its furrows and level its ridges; You soften it with showers and bless its growth. ¹¹ You crown the year with Your bounty, and Your paths overflow with plenty. ¹² The pastures of the wilderness overflow; the hills are robed with joy. ¹³ The pastures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are decked with grain. They shout in triumph; indeed, they sing.

Reading for the day: The psalm for Thanksgiving Day 2026: Psalm 65.

2 Corinthians 9:10–12

Paul is asking the Corinthians to give to the collection for “the poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Romans 15:26). His argument is that a gift does not stop with the person who receives it: it becomes thanks to God.

¹⁰ Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your store of seed and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹ You will be enriched in every way to be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will produce thanksgiving to God. ¹² For this ministry of service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanksgiving to God.

Reading for the day: From the second reading for Thanksgiving Day 2026: 2 Corinthians 9:6–15.

Joel 2:23–26

Locusts have stripped the land (Joel 1:4), and Joel tells the people of Zion that God will repay what the swarms ate. It was spoken after that disaster, not as a promise that every harvest will be good. These are people who remember an empty threshing floor.

²³ Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God, for He has given you the autumn rains for your vindication. He sends you showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. ²⁴ The threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. ²⁵ I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts — the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust— My great army that I sent against you. ²⁶ You will have plenty to eat, until you are satisfied. You will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has worked wonders for you. My people will never again be put to shame.

Reading for the day: From the first reading for Thanksgiving Day 2027: Joel 2:21–27.

Matthew 6:31–33

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his hearers not to worry about food, drink or clothes, because the Father knows what they need. On a day built around a large meal, it puts the table in second place.

³¹ Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

Reading for the day: From the Gospel for Thanksgiving Day 2027: Matthew 6:25–33.

Deuteronomy 26:9–11

An Israelite brings the first of the crop to the priest and recites the nation’s story aloud, from “a wandering Aramean” to the land (26:5–9). The thanks is a story told out loud, and the rejoicing that follows includes the Levite and the foreigner.

⁹ And He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land that You, O LORD, have given me.” Then you are to place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before Him. ¹¹ So you shall rejoice — you, the Levite, and the foreigner dwelling among you — in all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household.

Reading for the day: From the first reading for Thanksgiving Day 2028: Deuteronomy 26:1–11.

Philippians 4:6–7

Paul writes “in chains for Christ” (Philippians 1:13). The thanksgiving here comes with the request, not after the answer, so this is a verse for people who have not yet got what they are asking for.

⁶ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Reading for the day: From the second reading for Thanksgiving Day 2028: Philippians 4:4–9.

Psalm 107:1–9

The psalm tells of people God rescued. The first group, in verses 4–9, are lost in the wilderness, hungry and thirsty. Verse 8 is the refrain the psalm goes on to repeat, and it suits anyone coming to the table after a hard year.

¹ Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever. ² Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy ³ and gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south. ⁴ Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no path to a city in which to dwell. ⁵ They were hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted within them. ⁶ Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. ⁷ He led them on a straight path to reach a city where they could live. ⁸ Let them give thanks to the LORD for His loving devotion and His wonders to the sons of men. ⁹ For He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.

Reading for the day: Not one of the lectionary’s Thanksgiving readings; a free choice for grace at home.

Colossians 3:15–17

Paul has just told the church to bear with one another and “forgive any complaint” (3:13). “And be thankful” comes two verses later, so it is said to a group of people who may have complaints against each other, which makes it a fair text for a family table.

¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, for to this you were called as members of one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Reading for the day: Not one of the lectionary’s Thanksgiving readings; a free choice for grace at home.

In the Douay–Rheims, Psalms 65, 107 and 126 are numbered 64 (where the verses above are 10–14), 106 and 125. For more short verses on giving thanks, see Bible Verses About Gratitude and Thanksgiving; to pray at the table, see Thanksgiving Prayers and Grace Before Meals.

Thanksgiving and confession: Psalm 100 in five Bibles

The five public-domain Bibles we quote disagree in an instructive way about Psalm 100. The Hebrew word in its heading and in verse 4, todah (Strong’s H8426), covers both “thanksgiving” and “confession” or “avowal”: to thank God is to acknowledge out loud what he has done.

The Douay–Rheims, translated from the Latin Vulgate, numbers it Psalm 99 and reads “confession” where the others read “thanksgiving”. Both are fair to the Hebrew. Read it in the King James Version. (Bible Gateway’s Douay–Rheims is Bishop Challoner’s 18th-century revision, which reads “praise” here, so we do not link it.)

How the churches keep it

Catholic. Thanksgiving is not a holy day of obligation, but the Church in the United States provides for it. The U.S. bishops’ readings page for November 26, 2026 lists both the Thursday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time and “Thanksgiving Day”, with its own readings (Lectionary nos. 943–947), so a parish may celebrate a Thanksgiving Day Mass.

Episcopal and Anglican. The Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer lists Thanksgiving Day among its “Other Major Feasts” and again under “National Days”, with Independence Day. The 1928 American Prayer Book already had a Thanksgiving Day collect giving thanks for the harvest; you can read it on our page Collect for Thanksgiving Day, along with the Prayer Book’s General Thanksgiving.

Lutheran and other lectionary churches. Evangelical Lutheran Worship has a Prayer of the Day for Thanksgiving, and churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary have readings for the day. For Thanksgiving Day 2026 (Year A) they are Deuteronomy 8:7–18, Psalm 65, 2 Corinthians 9:6–15 and Luke 17:11–19; for Canada’s Thanksgiving the lectionary lists the day as October 12, 2026. Luther’s own table prayers from the Small Catechism are a natural grace for the meal.

Reformed, Presbyterian and evangelical. For the heirs of the Westminster tradition, Thanksgiving is the one national day that fits their old principle: no annual holy days by church law, but days of thanksgiving for God’s providence. Evangelical and nondenominational churches have no shared liturgy for the day, so practice is left to each congregation.

Orthodox. Thanksgiving is not in the Orthodox church calendar. In 2026 it falls during the Nativity Fast, which in the Orthodox Church in America runs from November 15 to December 24. We found no single Orthodox ruling on the Thanksgiving meal; Orthodox readers should ask their own priest.

Native American perspectives

The 1621 accounts were written by Englishmen, and Native Americans have long pointed out what the familiar story leaves out. By 1620 the Wampanoag had been dealing with European explorers, traders and enslavers for nearly a hundred years, and from 1616 to 1619 a wave of disease, the “Great Dying”, had devastated them; the English settled at the Wampanoag village of Patuxet. In 1621 their leader, Ousamequin, called Massasoit by the English, signed a treaty of mutual protection with the colony. An education specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Nichelle Garcia (Winnemem Wintu), describes the autumn gathering as “more about diplomacy than a feast” (American Indian magazine, 2025). Winslow himself, in the letter that describes the meal, calls the Wampanoag “a people without any religion or knowledge of God, yet very trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe-witted, just”, which shows whose eyes the story is told through.

Since 1970 the United American Indians of New England have held a National Day of Mourning at noon on Thanksgiving Day on Cole’s Hill, above Plymouth Rock. It began when Wamsutta (Frank B.) James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag invited to speak at the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing, was asked to submit his speech in advance; when organizers judged it too inflammatory, he gave it on Cole’s Hill instead (Pilgrim Hall Museum). The organizers call Thanksgiving “a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people” and the day “a day of remembrance and spiritual connection” (UAINE). Brian Moskwetah Weeden, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, said in 2021 that the day is “a National Day of Mourning for us — the fact that we’re not conquered or defeated”, adding that “you need to be thankful each and every day” (GBH News, November 22, 2021).

Native views are not uniform. Writing for the National Museum of the American Indian, Liz Hill noted that “most Native people are sitting down to turkey dinners” while some “prefer to observe the day as one of mourning” (as quoted by The Christian Post, November 21, 2012). Both are real, and both deserve to be heard on their own terms.

Our take

This is our own view, not a ruling for any church, and some readers on both sides will disagree with it.

Thanksgiving is the most biblical holiday on the American calendar, and Christians should keep it as a Christian day. Its root is not a myth about friendship at a dinner table; it is the Reformed conviction that God’s people must stop and thank him out loud when he has been good to them, and Lincoln’s proclamation is closer to a psalm than to a political speech. The strict Puritan worry about fixed holy days is answered by Romans 14: a day kept “to the Lord” is lawful, and a yearly reminder to thank God is a wise use of that freedom, not a superstition.

But stop telling the 1621 meal as the origin story. It was a harvest celebration and a diplomatic meeting between two peoples, described only by one side, and neither writer called it a thanksgiving. Christians have no stake in defending a children’s-book version of it, and Scripture itself pushes the other way: in Luke 17 the one who gives thanks rightly is the outsider, and Deuteronomy’s harvest feast sets a place for the foreigner. The honest history, including the Wampanoag losses that followed, is not an attack on the holiday. The National Day of Mourning is a claim Christians should hear rather than argue away.

And keep Lincoln’s second half. His proclamation asks for thanks with “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.” Deuteronomy 8 warns that full tables make people forget God. A Thanksgiving that thanks no one, or that thanks God for blessings without any room for repentance, is not the day Lincoln proclaimed and not the thanksgiving Scripture describes. Say grace by name, read Luke 17 at the table, and remember the ones Lincoln remembered: the widows, orphans, mourners and sufferers.

Keeping the day

• Before the meal: read Luke 17:11–19 or Psalm 100 aloud, then pray one of the graces in Thanksgiving Prayers and Grace Before Meals, such as the Catholic grace or the Prayer Book grace before meat. Families who like to read together can take turns with Psalm 136 and its refrain.
• At the table: ask each person to name one thing they did not earn. That is the point of Deuteronomy 8:17–18.
• Set a place for someone: Deuteronomy 16:14 names the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Invite one person who would otherwise eat alone, or give to a local food bank.
• Around the day: Christ the King Sunday falls on November 22, four days before Thanksgiving, and the church year starts again with Advent on November 29.

Over to you

Which will be harder at your table this year: thanking God out loud in front of relatives who do not believe, or telling children who love the Pilgrim story what really happened in 1621 and after? Tell us which one you will try, and how it went.

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