The Thanksgiving Story

Most stories of Thanksgiving history start with the harvest celebration

of the Pilgrims and the Indians that took place in the autumn of 1621.

Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest,

and the local Indians did participate,

this "first Thanksgiving" was not a holiday,

simply a gathering.

The story behind the holiday traditions.

The Pilgrims, who sailed to America aboard the Mayflower, were originally members of the English Separatist Church. They had fled their home in England to escape religious persecution.
The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620.

Their first winter was devastating.

At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was a generous one. And so the remaining colonists decided to celebrate it with a feast.

It lasted for three days.

This "thanksgiving" feast was not repeated the following year.

Many years passed before the event was repeated.

After a 40-year campaign of writing editorials and letters to governors and presidents, Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, turned her obsession into reality when, in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

Since 1941, Congress has declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday to be commemorated by friends and families all over the country in the fourth Thursday of November.