Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a tradition in the US that is celebrated every year the fourth Thursday in November.

The history of thanksgiving, particularly in the US, goes back to the year 1620, when a group of about one hundred people (named pilgrims) arrived to Plymouth in the US from England, escaping from religious persecution (they questioned the beliefs of the Church of England). They went first to Holland and later they aboard a ship named Mayflower in which they did their trip to America.

Once in America they faced a very terrible winter so nearly half of the pilgrims died (around 46 out of 102). After that winter an Indian named Squanto, who knew their language, taught them how to plant corn and catch fish. Also, thanks to Squanto the pilgrims could negotiate a peace treaty with the Wampanoag, a nearby Indian tribe.

After their first harvest in 1621 the pilgrims decided to have a three day feast to give thanks to Squanto and the Wampanoag tribe, who helped them to survive their first year in America.

Nowadays, Thanksgiving is celebrated as a familiar dinner where the most common foods served are turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy and pumpkin pie. In many families there is a special prayer of thanks before the meal. Also family members may each mention something they are very thankful for.

If you want to learn some more about the pilgrims and the first thanksgiving in an entertaining way, there is a movie named “Mayflower: the pilgrims’ adventure”. Here they narrate everything I have already told in the first two paragraphs here, so I think it’s not necessary for me to write it down again... is it?

If you want to learn some more about thanksgiving in a not-that-entertaining way, you can visit this pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)

http://www.thanksgivingworld.com/thanksgiving-history.html

http://www.rumela.com/events/thanks_origin.htm