Generations of Americans who were schoolchildren during the Ozzie and Harriet years from the 1950s through 1960s have keen memories of singing an ancient hymn long associated with Thanksgiving titled “We Gather Together.” In fact, the hymn had nothing to do with the mythologized first Thanksgiving held by the Pilgrims in November 1621. Based on a Dutch folk tune, the hymn was written in 1597 to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish forces at the Battle of Turnhout. Prior to that, Dutch protestants were forbidden to gather for religious observances. It first appeared in American hymnals around 1903 and rapidly gained popularity as the Thanksgiving hymn sung at church services and in public schools during the week of the November holiday. In 1992, comedian Adam Sandler performed his own mocking version of the holiday standard on Saturday Night Live that more or less coincided with “We Gather Together” being removed forever from public schools and gatherings. The hymn is still a staple in churches across America at Thanksgiving.

The holiday itself has something of a checkered and violent history. The highly mythologized account of the first Thanksgiving “harvest feast” shared by English Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in 1621 generally ignores the fact that disease brought by the colonists to North America wiped out 90 percent of New England’s native populations. Following a major Patriot victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide Thanksgiving celebration in America, marking Nov. 26, 1789, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” He was then upstaged by Abraham Lincoln 74 years later, who formally established the national holiday when he issued a proclamation for a National Day of Thanksgiving in October 1863, following the Battle of Gettysburg, in which 50,000 soldiers died. In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday one week earlier than normal to the second-to-last Thursday in November, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during the final years of the Great Depression. 

Regardless of these inconvenient truths — and Adam Sandler’s buffoonery — the overwhelming majority of us in a wonderfully diverse America embrace Thanksgiving as a welcome opportunity to gather with family and friends and celebrate however we see fit with food, football and a nice afternoon nap.