Is Thanksgiving a Pagan Holiday?

Thanksgiving, at least as it is celebrated in Canada and the United States, often comes wrapped in the familiar storybook version: Pilgrims in black hats, a table full of food, and a peaceful meal shared with Indigenous neighbors. We’re taught to see it as a wholesome Christian holiday—an expression of gratitude to God for the harvest and survival in the New World.

But if we peel back the layers of history, something fascinating emerges. Beneath the Protestant prayers and colonial myths lies something much older. The rhythm of gathering at harvest time, feasting, and giving thanks isn’t uniquely Christian, nor did it begin in Plymouth in 1621. In fact, Thanksgiving sits on top of a long lineage of pagan harvest festivals, rebranded and reshaped over centuries.

The question “Is Thanksgiving a pagan holiday?” has no simple yes or no answer. But by tracing its roots, we uncover a story that looks very much like the old pattern of Christianity borrowing, or outright stealing, from pagan traditions to ease the transition of converts. Let’s take a journey back through time and follow the thread.

The Thanksgiving We Think We Know

Every autumn, the numbers paint a clear picture: 91% of Americans plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in some way, and in Canada, the figure is nearly as high. For most households, that means gathering around the table, passing plates of comfort food, and leaning into tradition.

But what those traditions mean varies widely. According to recent research, 65% of families say a prayer or blessing at the table, while 69% simply take turns sharing what they’re thankful for. For some, it’s a devout Christian moment. For others, it’s more about gratitude, family, and connection. In fact, when asked what Thanksgiving means most, the top response wasn’t God or country at all—it was “spending time with family” (65%).

The holiday is so deeply embedded in North American culture that nearly 9 in 10 consumers say they will shop for Thanksgiving food, drinks, and table staples each year. It is both sacred and commercial, spiritual and secular, celebrated by almost everyone yet interpreted in profoundly different ways.

And yet—amid the parades, football games, and turkey dinners—how many of us pause to ask: where did this holiday really come from? Because beneath the blessings and the shopping lists lies an older story, one that predates Pilgrims and Puritans, reaching back into the pagan harvest rites of Europe and beyond.

The Universal Rhythm of Harvest

For as long as humans have grown food, we have celebrated the harvest. It’s a cycle embedded in our bones: the hard work of spring planting, the anxious tending through summer, and the relief of gathering abundance in autumn. Across cultures and continents, festivals arose to honor this turning point.

In Celtic traditions, Lughnasadh (or Lammas) marked the early grain harvest in August, a time of offering the first loaves of bread to the gods. Later in the season came the Autumn Equinox, known to many modern pagans as Mabon, a moment of balance between light and dark, when gratitude for the harvest was paired with preparations for the long winter.

In Germanic and Norse lands, October brought Winternights, a feast honoring ancestors and deities to secure protection through the dark season. Rituals included animal sacrifices, toasts of mead, and communal feasting—echoes of which we still feel in modern autumn gatherings.

In ancient Greece and Rome, festivals for Demeter and Ceres revolved around the grain harvest. The Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, for instance, tied the agricultural cycle to themes of death, rebirth, and the turning of the seasons.

The symbolism was always the same: food as sacred gift, gratitude as ritual, feasting as communion. These were not quaint local traditions. They were universal.

Christianity’s Habit of Borrowing

As Christianity spread across Europe, it faced an uphill battle: how to convert deeply pagan communities who were already attached to their seasonal rituals. The Church’s strategy, time and again, was to overlay Christian meanings onto pagan festivals.

Yule became Christmas. Ostara shaped Easter. Samhain’s fires flickered into All Saints’ Day. And the harvest festivals, too, were gradually baptized under the Christian God. Instead of honoring Demeter, Ceres, or Freyr, people were told to thank the Christian Creator. Instead of making offerings to the spirits of the land, they gave thanks in church.

This wasn’t an accident. It was a calculated act of cultural absorption. Pagan feasts were far too beloved to abolish, so the Church rebranded them. If Thanksgiving feels like a Christian holiday today, it’s largely because that branding stuck. But the bones of the feast remain undeniably pagan.

The Colonial Rebrand

When the English Puritans sailed to North America, they carried with them these ingrained traditions of autumn thanksgiving. In England, days of “thanksgiving” had long been proclaimed after military victories, survival through plagues, or, most often, at the close of harvest. These were not just religious rituals—they were extensions of the old harvest feasts dressed in Protestant clothing.

The so-called “First Thanksgiving” of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is remembered as a devout Christian moment. In reality, it was a three-day harvest feast where settlers and Wampanoag people ate together. Wildfowl, venison, corn, beans, squash—foods tied directly to the land’s abundance—covered the tables.

For the colonists, this was not a brand-new invention. It was a continuation of their harvest customs, transplanted to a new continent. They prayed, yes, but they also feasted, laughed, and gave thanks in a way their pagan ancestors would have recognized.

Thanksgiving did not begin with Pilgrims at a feast, but with humanity’s timeless rhythm of honoring the harvest, feasting together, and giving thanks to the earth itself.

Symbols That Betray Their Roots

Look at the symbols that define Thanksgiving today and you’ll see the echoes of paganism shining through:

• The Cornucopia – the horn of plenty, straight out of Greek mythology, once offered to gods of fertility and abundance.

• Pumpkins, gourds, and corn – harvest offerings long placed on pagan altars.

• Communal feasting – the very heart of ancient rites, meant to bind communities together in gratitude and survival.

These are not inherently Christian symbols. They are the leftovers of a much older worldview, carefully folded into a modern holiday.

The Indigenous Layer

We can’t talk about Thanksgiving without acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of North America, who held their own harvest ceremonies long before European settlers arrived. The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, for example, is a profound expression of gratitude for the natural world: the waters, the animals, the plants, the sun, the moon. The Wampanoag harvest feast, with its prayers and offerings, mirrored the universal human impulse to give thanks for sustenance.

It’s important to recognize that the colonial narrative of Thanksgiving often erased these traditions, just as Christianity once buried Europe’s pagan rites. Yet Indigenous ceremonies belong to the same ancient rhythm: harvest, gratitude, community, survival.

So, Is Thanksgiving a Pagan Holiday?

If we’re looking strictly at its present form—turkey, parades, football, and church services—then no, Thanksgiving is not “pagan” in the literal sense. But if we follow its lineage, the answer shifts.

Thanksgiving is a palimpsest—a cultural parchment written over and rewritten again, but never fully erasing the text beneath. Beneath the colonial myth lies the Protestant harvest day. Beneath the Protestant feast lies the medieval harvest festival. Beneath that, the pagan rites of Mabon, Lammas, Winternights, and Demeter’s mysteries.

In that sense, Thanksgiving is as pagan as it is Christian, as Indigenous as it is colonial. It is a holiday born not from one faith, but from humanity’s shared impulse to honor the earth’s abundance.

Beneath the prayers and parades, Thanksgiving still carries the whisper of ancient rites—reminding us that gratitude has always been humanity’s most sacred ritual.

A Beautiful Origin Story

Maybe the real story of Thanksgiving is not one of ownership—whether it “belongs” to Christians, pagans, or Indigenous peoples—but one of continuity. The harvest feast has always been a bridge between humanity and nature, a moment where gratitude rises like incense to the skies.

When we sit at our tables in late November or early October, we are echoing countless generations before us: the Celts who baked bread for Lugh, the Norse who poured mead for their ancestors, the Romans who thanked Ceres, the Wampanoag who honored the spirits of the land.

Christianity didn’t create this tradition. It adopted it, reshaped it, and told us a different story about its origins. But the heart of it—the feast, the gratitude, the honoring of earth’s gifts—remains beautifully, unmistakably pagan.

A Final Thought

So, is Thanksgiving a pagan holiday? Perhaps the better question is: Why does this question even matter?

It matters because origin stories shape the way we see ourselves. When we recognize the deeper layers of Thanksgiving, we reclaim a sense of connection to the earth, to our ancestors, and to traditions that span millennia. We begin to see that gratitude isn’t confined to one religion, one culture, or one moment in history. It’s a thread that ties us all together.

This autumn, as you gather at the table, you don’t have to see it only through the lens of Plymouth Rock or Protestant sermons. You can see it as part of a much older, richer tapestry—a reminder that long before the word “Thanksgiving” was spoken, humanity was already giving thanks.

And maybe, just maybe, that makes the holiday more meaningful than the textbooks ever let on.