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A Thanksgiving Tradition 594 Years in the Making

Disclaimer: This is a history post...I am a history teacher, after all. You're about to get a history lesson. Fair warning.

Last year around Thanksgiving, I wrote a brief cumulative history of Cincinnati's 100+ year-old Thanksgiving Day Race. It's a great local tradition that I look forward to racing every year; however, it turns out that most cities and towns have their own turkey trot traditions. (Heck, Buffalo's race is even older than Cincinnati's.)

For thousands of runners across the country, road races are a Thanksgiving tradition. We don't often think of them like that, but the community turkey trot belongs in the conversation with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and football as Thanksgiving staples.

As it turns out, we can trace the legacy of running (racing) all the way back to the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Running has a stronger tie to the initial holiday than stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc - foods which weren't served at that first festival!

How do we know this? Well, there are two surviving accounts of the first Thanksgiving. That's it, only two! Everything we truly know from the November 1621 comes from one of two short accounts.

In the only true primary source (an account that was written by someone at the time of the actual event), Pilgrim Edward Winslow wrote one paragraph about the festivities of the first Thanksgiving. He writes about fowl being hunted for the meal (maybe turkey, but also maybe pheasant or duck or something else), Massasoit's Wampanoag Indians showing up and contributing five deer to the feast, and three days of festivities. All interesting, but more relevant to this blog, Winslow also writes, "for three days we entertained and feasted." That's the key right there: three days of feasting but also three days of entertaining.

So what types of entertaining happened in Plymouth Plantation? Winslow doesn't say, so we don't actually know for sure. But based on what historians do know about recreation among Native Americans of the northeast and recreation among English and Dutch settlers of the time, we can make a reasonable assumption.

Of the various games and traditions from each society, there are two that each had in common: competitions of marksmanship (with arrows for the Wampanoag and muskets for the Pilgrims) and footraces. Based on that, we can probably safely assume that shooting contests and running contests were part of the entertainment during the first Thanksgiving.

And if you think about it, that makes sense. Both of those competitions are simple to understand -- which is important when the competing parties don't speak a common language. Marksmanship is simple: stand at  given point and try to hit a given target most accurately. Footraces are similarly simple: be the first person to run from point A to point B. That's it. Not too complicated. For two societies that were entertaining each other but didn't share similar customs, traditions, or language, it makes sense that they'd engage in the most similar, simplest recreation.

So for three days, the Pilgrims and the Indians engaged in feasting and entertainment -- that most likely included marksmanship contests and footraces.

It's fitting, then, that we celebrate Thanksgiving every year with a road race, because that's how they celebrated the first Thanksgiving! So for everyone lacing up their trainers or racing flats tomorrow, whether in Cincinnati or another city, take pride in the fact that you are doing the same thing the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag did back in 1621. That's more that can be said for pumpkin pie.

EDIT:
I finished in second place for the fourth time in five years. I just cannot seem to win this damn race.

Comments

  1. Read your Indy recap and ran my turkey trot yesterday (Miamisburg OH) without a watch. First race ever. Wow. Took a minute off last year's PR!

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