Fun fact: The first Thanksgiving was in Virginia, not Massachusetts.
It’s true. Even President Kennedy, who could certainly claim a bit of New England bias, included mention of Virginia in his 1963 Thanksgiving Proclamation.
A brief history lesson:
After a two-and-a-half month trip across the Atlantic in 1619, Captain John Woodlief landed the Margaret at Berkeley Hundred, later called Berkeley Plantation. He and 37 other settlers waded ashore on Dec. 4 and, following orders from their backers in England, immediately dropped to their knees and gave thanks; the landing date was to “be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.” Their ship’s stores were almost depleted, and historians theorize that the settlers supplemented old ship rations with Virginia ham and roasted oysters for the very first Thanksgiving dinner.
This tradition didn’t have much time to take hold; after two years, the Powhatan confederacy of tribes realized that the settlers only intended to expand further into their lands and continue working to convert them and undermine their way of life. So in 1622, they attacked Berkeley and other settlements, killing 347 settlers. Berkeley Hundred was abandoned, and the Thanksgiving tradition that began there was lost to time—until Virginia scholar Lyon G. Tyler (son of President John Tyler) unearthed documentation in 1931 of the Thanksgiving observance there.
Massachusetts Pilgrims may continue to get most of the Turkey Day love, but a little earlier this November, Virginia voters gave us all quite a lot to be thankful for.
Virginians not only rejected Ed Gillespie’s Trump-style, racist campaign tactics at the ballot box, but they rejected these tactics by a resounding nine-point margin.
Virginians chose to follow Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s four years of economic and civil justice accomplishments by electing his lieutenant governor to succeed him and carry on his legacy.
Virginians—especially women—stepped forward to run for office in record numbers this year, creating the opportunity for Democrats to run solid candidates in an unprecedented number of House of Delegates districts.
New independent progressive groups that popped up in the wake of Donald Trump’s election focused their attention on Virginia House races, helping provide these campaigns with key tools and resources.
Virginians elected more new Democrats to the House of Delegates than they have in any single year since 1899.
Voters in House District 13 not only rejected extreme anti-LGBTQ bigot Bob Marshall, but they chose to replace him with Virginia’s first transgender lawmaker.
At least 15 new Democrats, many of them women and people of color, will be sworn into the Virginia House in January.
And finally, we must be thankful for every single vote in every election, but this year provides an excellent example of why each ballot is so crucial, because in Virginia, the fight for the House majority is not over yet. Democrats will launch recounts in two races where their candidates trail by 106 and 10 votes, and registrar error is delaying final results in a third race in which the Democrat trails by just 82 votes. With Democrats just one seat away from a 50-50 split and two seats away from an outright House of Delegates majority, no one can rightly dispute the fact that every vote truly does matter, and we should be grateful for every last one.