Thanksgiving today is full of food, festivities and football.

However, the real story behind the first Thanksgiving is full of drama, hardship, starvation, persecution and abduction.

Here is a short synopsis of the main characters and story of the first Thanksgiving with details you may not know.

In 1614, Thomas Hunt kidnapped a young Native American from the Patuxet tribe named Tisquantum, also known as Squanto.

After 5 years in Spain and England as an indentured servant, Squanto found a way home in 1619 but discovered an epidemic had killed his tribe.

Because Squanto spoke English, he was a liaison between the Indian tribes and the colonists. On November 1622, he died in Chatham, Massachusetts.

Follow the dream

William Bradford, orphaned by age 7, joined the secret Puritan meetings at Scrooby Manor at age 12. In 1607, Bradford was in the small congregation who left the manor due to the cruelty of King James I. They sailed to the Dutch Republic for freedom of religion.

While in the Dutch Republic, the Scrooby congregation began dreaming of their own colony in America. In 1620, some of packed all they had to make their dream come true.

They left Plymouth, England, in 1620 on The Mayflower with 102 passengers and 30-40 crew members.Mayflowerhistory.com states that 18 of those passengers were wives of some of the men. Only 5 women survived that first winter.

Their planned destination was a colony in Virginia but winter sea winds blew them to Cape Cod where they landed Nov. 9, 1620.

In the first winter, 45 of the 102 settlers died.

Squanto shows how

A providential meeting with English-speaking Squanto changed the story from devastation and loss to hope and life.

He taught them how to cultivate corn, catch fish, native plants to eat and to avoid, fur trading basics and most importantly help form an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe.

After a successful harvest, Gov. William Bradford invited the Wampanoag tribe for a 3-day “Thanksgiving” celebration. The surviving 50 colonists feasted with the Indians, thankful to the Lord for a good harvest and the tribe that helped them survive.

What was on the menu of that first Thanksgiving? Deer, turkey, waterfowl, cod, bass, bread, corn and barley. They also ate clams, mussels, lobster, eel acorns, walnuts, squash and beans, and native berries.

For a sweet treat, corn was parched and mixed with strawberries for a cake-like dessert.

Lincoln did it

How did Thanksgiving become a national holiday?

In 1827, Sarah Josepha Hale, author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” wrote letters and editorials for 36 years to establish the Thanksgiving holiday.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the papers to declare it a national holiday the last Thursday in each November.

To help Christmas gift sales during the Great Depression, President Roosevelt moved the holiday to the 4th day in November in 1939.

A new tradition should be to read the 2 first-hand accounts on www.Mayflower-history.com and to read some of Bradford’s book: “Plymouth Plantation.”

I will eat lots of turkey, sweet potato casserole and desserts, and start a new tradition of having the kids read the first-hand accounts to me.

I promise to stay awake.