Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. 

It traditionally has been a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest.   While many of us gather on this day with families and friends to share a large meal and what a meal - turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie,  Thanksgiving Day is more than about sharing a meal, it is a time for expressing our thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation to God, family and friends.

While the origins of Thanksgiving vary in their beginnings, harvest festivals have been celebrated around the world since time immemorial. 

Our holiday we call Thanksgiving Day is generally considered to date back to 1621, held at Plymouth Plantation, in Massachusetts, following a long and brutal winter.  The Pilgrims celebrated their first successful harvest in the New World with a Thanksgiving feast.  The feast was attended by 90 members of the Wampanoag Tribe.  These Native Americans initially went to investigate the sounds of gunfire, which turned out to be the Pilgrims celebration.  Upon this discovery, Wampanoag hunters joined in the celebration, bringing deer and numerous fowl to share with the Pilgrims and the tradition was born!

In the second half of the 1600s, thanksgivings after the harvest festivals became more common and started to become annual events.  They also began to be celebrated on different days in different communities and in some places they were even held more than once each year.

George Washington, our first president, proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day in 1789.    However, Thanksgiving wasn’t considered a national holiday until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln released a proclamation officially establishing the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving.  Under President Franklin Roosevelt, the Thanksgiving holiday as we know it today was moved to the fourth Thursday in November.

While our Thanksgiving traditions have grown since the first celebration to include parades, football games and Black Friday shopping extravaganzas, may we never lose sight of this opportunity to express our thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation to God, family and friends, for these are the true treasures of a thankful heart.

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

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