Today is the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday in November (in Canada a similar Thanksgiving Day holiday is celebrated on the second Monday in October).

This American holiday traces back* to 1621, before the United States of America was even a country.  The holiday was first celebrated in the town of what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.  The holiday is now celebrated in every town in America!  This is a non-religious holiday that unites people across the country as they gather together to share food and give thanks for all they have.  Today I’d like to give you a little more history about this holiday so you can better understand it and its unique origins.

The history of Thanksgiving…
Some of the original Europeans who settled in America were pilgrims** who were called Puritans.  They moved to America from England.  Along with many other traditions these pilgrims brought with them a custom that included days of fasting and days of thanksgiving, which they practiced regularly.  One group of Puritans from England travelled to America and had a very tough first winter in their new land.  In their first year in American they lost almost half of the 102 people who originally traveled to America in 1620.  After a very hard first year the Puritans had a wonderful harvest*** of food in 1621.  This food helped the pilgrims to live through the following winter.  Also, this good harvest gave the Puritans hope for their new life in America.   Because of their large harvest they decided to celebrate with a feast.  The Puritans invited 91 Native Americans (Indians), who had helped them survive their first year and learn how to farm in a new land, to celebrate  They had a three-day feast with the Native Americans. It is believed that the Puritans would not have made it through their first year without the help of the Indians. This first feast was likely to have been more of a traditional English harvest festival than a true “thanksgiving” observance, which would have also involved fasting, but needless to say, the Puritans were thankful.

A similar “thanksgiving” feast among the pilgrims and Indians did not happen again the following year. In fact, many years passed before the celebration was repeated. It wasn’t until 1676 that another day of thanksgiving was held by this same group of people, but the story of this first celebration of Thanksgiving was talked about and the history of it has been passed down from one generation to the next.  George Washington, the first president of the United States, proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789.  Then in 1863 President Lincoln decided that the last Thursday in November would be a national day of Thanksgiving every year.  The date of when this holiday would be celebrated changed a couple of times, but eventually the Congress of the United States made Thanksgiving Day a national holiday on the fourth Thursday in November.

Today is a day for giving thanks in the United States.  People across the country are sitting around tables with their families and friends (and even strangers), sharing with others what they are thankful for this year.  Here is your chance to share what you are thankful for; you can submit a comment to this post letting us all know what you are thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

*to trace back = the origin or where something developed
**pilgrim = a person who journeys for a religious region
***harvest = a gathering of food grown in fields or on trees