Thanksgiving is a very important holiday in present-day American culture. People all throughout America take extra care to make this day a memorable and happy celebration. This tradition has been in the American lifestyle since 1621 when it first started. Even though this tradition has been altered and changed the significance and meaning remains the same. The first Thanksgiving was an important landmark and made a huge imprint in the American culture today.
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the English Separatists who had come to the new world. They came traveling on the mayflower to escape England for religious freedom. Many of the Separatists, often called pilgrims, suffered many hardships on the way to the new world. Even when they finally reached their destination they found things to be difficult. Separatists should not to be taken lightly, though the journey was hard they stuck with it. Richard Hakluyt said, ‘“We are well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country, and inured the difficulties of a strange and hard land, which yet in a great part we have by patience overcome . . .’” (qtd. in Philbrick 6). After the Pilgrims arrived they picked land by rivers with good planting area and called it Plymouth. A harsh winter came quickly upon the Pilgrims where they faced many hardships before spring relieved them. Now was their time to plant and prepare for the oncoming year. They did not know the land well and many people say that the only reason they survived was because a local Indian, named Squanto, helped them and taught them the ways of his people. Soon the settlers had much of their planting done.
Harvest Time was here and was changing the face of the Separatist attitude. After such a hard winter the ...
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...ed time is still found on the fourth Thursday of every November to have a day of Thanksgiving. A small group of English Separatists made the big difference today, changing the lifestyle of Americans just by one little Harvest Festival. That little festival is the reason why today millions go and buy huge turkeys and gather with their families to celebrate and give thanks.
Works Cited
Conforti, Joseph. Saints and Strangers. Baltimore: JHU Press, 2006.
Nielsen, Arthur. "1789 Two Hundred Years Ago." American Heritage 01 Nov 1989: 153.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower. New York: The Viking Press, 2006.
Schwarz, Fredric. "The First Thanksgiving, Sort Of." American Heritage 01 Nov 1996: 157.
Winslow, Edward. Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth. Cambridge: J. K. Wiggin, 1865.
Brownscombe, Jennie A. The First Thanksgiving at Plymoth. 1914. Pilgrim Hall, New York.
The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of coming together between Native Americans and the English settlers in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth Colony. Before this first Thanksgiving, the settlers were preparing for the harsh coming winter by gathering food and supplies. With the help of Squanto, a Wampanoag Indian who knew English, the settlers to grow corn and use fish to fertilize the soil for better harvest. Squanto helped the Colonists learn how to fish. This brought the Wampanoag Indians closer to the English settlers. They began to work together, soon the Native Americans offered to help hunt for and with the English settlers. The leader of the Wampanoag, Massasoit and 90 of his mencame for the first Thanksgiving. For three days, the English and the native men, women and children celebrated together playing games, singing songs, dancing and feasting on their harvest. Their meal consisted of corn, shellfish and other roasted meat like duck, goose and venison. This marked the historic and first Thanksgiving holiday of the history of our nation.
Moraff,C. The Real History of Thanksgiving." Philadelphia Magazine (2012).p.n.d. Data retrieved from http://www.phillymag.com/news/2012/11/20/dark-origins-thanksgiving/ on May 6,2014.
1. Thanksgiving is a public holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.
After braving two months at sea, crossing the stormy Atlantic Ocean, the Pilgrims finally landed off the coast of the New World. In the freezing December waters, they anchored the Mayflower and sent a landing party to what is now Plymouth Harbor beach. To secure the small landing boat against the rain and winds, they tied it to a large rock - Plymouth Rock - and so begins the legend of the original Thanksgiving tale.
On the second Monday of October, Columbus Day is a holiday that is celebrated in the United States, Spain, etc. This holiday signifies the discovery of the new world; however, this may not be the case. Since the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced Columbus day to be an official federal holiday, there has been a lot of controversy whether people should or should not celebrate the holiday. Many people do not believe that this holiday is significant enough to be celebrated. So the question is, should Columbus day be celebrated? The answer is no. Columbus day is a holiday that celebrates the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the new world.1 It glorifies Columbus being the first European to discover North America. This is all not entirely true and that is one of the many
When I was in 5th grade we started discussing Christopher Columbus, “the hero that discovered America”. I thought very highly of him because I was told that none of us would be here if it wasn’t for his discovering of America. I mean there is a day after him, usually mean or selfless people don’t have a day of the year that celebrates them and their life. America celebrates Columbus day because on October 12th, 1492, Christopher landed in the New World. We have in our minds that he was the first person to ever land in America, but it was the Native Americans.
The first Thanksgiving was a very memorable time in U.S. history. The real meaning of Thanksgiving is to spend time with your family and be thankful for what you have been blessed with.
On the Twelfth of october every year, the United states of America celebrates a very controversial holiday. Columbus day. Which marks the day that Spanish explorer and conquistador Christopher Columbus first landed on the island of Hispaniola (Now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Many good things have come out of Columbus’ crew first landing in the Americas. The blending of culture between the old and the new world, the beginning of the globalization of our world. But even the best diamond has its blemishes. Millions upon millions of Native Americans lost their lives in the following hundreds of years from old world diseases and gold thirsty Europeans.
No fruitful information On the edge of winter comes November, re-introducing early evenings, brisk air and leafless trees but, before the dormancy of winter settles in, the annual compensation of Thanksgiving brings families and friends together to celebrate life with food. Common on most tables, turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie fill our stomachs and warm our hearts. Each Thanksgiving brings about the recognition of a year’s worth of changes and last Thanksgiving is no exception.
When the great holiday of Thanksgiving comes to mind, most people think of becoming total gluttons and gorging themselves with a seemingly unending amount of food. Others might think of the time spent with family and friends. The whole basis of the holiday is family togetherness, fellowship, and thankfulness for blessings received during the previous year.
Columbus day is one of the oldest and most traditional holiday in American history. However, many people do not know what they are celebrating. America should not continue to celebrate Columbus Day because of the cruelty Columbus brought to the natives, his legacy, and achievements. Columbus Day is unreasonably celebrated because he brought the terrible act of the raping of native women, hunting of people with dogs, and harsh punishments. Moreover, it should stop being celebrated as Columbus also created the opportunity for the spread of diseases, slavery, and death. Additionally, some of his achievements that are celebrated such as: the discovery of the new world, his theory of the earth's shape, and establishing contact with the new world
But they were days of prayer, not just of feasting. The tradition of the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving is both a myth and legend. The pilgrims did not celebrate Thanksgiving the next year or any year thereafter, but some of their descendants later made a “Forefathers Day” that usually occurred on the 21st or 22nd of December. Some presidents made one-time Thanksgiving holidays and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday. Our Thanksgiving today is the fourth Thursday of November, thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. But the pilgrims first thanksgiving began at some unknown date between September 21 and November 9. The date of Thanksgiving was probably set by Lincoln to somewhat correlate with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, which occurred on November 21 of
As the story goes, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth by “accident” and found the Indians who taught the Pilgrims how to plant and grow food. Because of the Indians generosity, the Pilgrims were able to live through winter. Upon the first harvest following the harsh winter, the Pilgrims and Indians sat down together for a grand Thanksgiving feast. Most of the textbooks found in schools today either portray this version of the founding of the United States or they tend to just gloss over it and try to leave it out all together. For the authors of the textbooks know that if the students found out the real truth there would be nothing left of nationalism. For most textbooks leave out the early settlers such as the Spanish and the Dutch. These civilizations settled America long before the Pilgrims arrived and with these civilizations came what was to make it easy for the Pilgrims to settle in America – disease.
...f greed, we as a nation need to seriously rethink why we celebrate the holiday, and make amends to our practices in order to embody that meaning.
A big part of Thanksgiving is a Thanksgiving feast. The feast usually consists of potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, peas, gravy, stuffing, salads, buns and lots of other great food. The main part of the feast is usually the turkey. Other families might have ham, roast beef, duck or chicken. The dessert that is most likely to follow the feast is pumpkin pie. Other people may choose different desserts and food depending on their customs and beliefs for which they choose to give thanks. Let’s not forget the biggest and most important reason for this holiday – giving THANKS! People usually give thanks for everything they have. Their jobs, health, families or just being alive are just a few of the things that people give thanks for.