You may notice one of the many new banners on our main page that will be displayed each year for the holidays in the United States and Canada.  Each will include a thread remembering these important days in our life.  Please feel free to share your comments and experiences.

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.  Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations.  It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.  Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.

In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is commonly, but not universally, traced to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts.  The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest.  Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England.  Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the "First Thanksgiving", including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631.

Thanksgiving proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress, each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes.  As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nation-wide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789.

In modern times the President of the United States, in addition to issuing a proclamation, will "pardon" a turkey, which spares the bird's life and ensures that it will spend the duration of its life roaming freely on farmland.