Thanksgiving Day Story in English

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Most Americans are familiar with the Pilgrim Thanksgiving of 1621, but few realize that it was not the first holiday of its kind in North America. Long before Europeans set foot in the Americas, native people tried to ensure good harvests with dances and rituals such as the Cherokee’s Green Corn Dance.

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated every year across the world on the fourth Thursday of November which will be celebrated this year on 24 November 2023. On this day people celebrate by saying thanks to God for their blessings for the previous year’s annual harvest and other things. Also, on this day people also express their gratitude to those people who have helped them in any way in their life. So on this Thanksgiving Day, express your love and gratitude to your God, loved ones and all the good in your life. Also celebrate this day with family and friends and enjoy delicious food.

Our mind remains disturbed. We keep searching for peace. There can be many reasons for this. Those reasons may be beyond our control. But we constantly ignore one small thing which is very simple. Yes, we are forgetting simple but magical words like thank you, thank you. We think that I did a lot for others. But other people did nothing for me. We ignore or want to forget those incidents in which we got help from others.

Try to say thanks to others

If someone teaches us something or helps us, we do not even say thank you to the other person. Our lifestyle has become such that we do not even have words to thank others. Perhaps that is why Thanksgiving Day is celebrated in countries like America. These days provide us some special moments for our peace. We also connect with those people who are important in our lives. Before knowing how to get peace of mind, let us know about Thanksgiving Day.

What is Thanksgiving Day?

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated as a national holiday in the United States and Canada. This day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. This year, November 24 is the fourth Thursday. This day is celebrated in America to say thanks for the harvest and the blessings of nature and elders.

Due to globalization, this day has started being celebrated in many countries of the world including India. Whereas expressing gratitude or saying thanks is at the foundation of Indian values. We believe that saying thank you to any person brings inner happiness and also peace of mind.

We have 5 simple but effective ways to celebrate Thanksgiving Day

1. Communicate with those who love you

It is difficult to live life alone. Loneliness can give peace for a while, but not for long. Therefore, meet and talk to people who love you. Healthy relationships are the foundation of a peaceful mind. Try to always have positive conversations. Negative conversation disturbs the mind. When you’re feeling stressed and upset, reach out to someone who listens to you. And what better occasion than today?

2. Forgive mistakes (practice forgiving)

Arguments and anger all increase unrest. If someone has hurt you or done something bad to you, forgive them. If you don’t forgive, your thoughts will keep troubling you. This will lead you to bitterness. Instead of adding bitterness to your life, choose to forgive and you will find peace.

3. Celebrate with creativity

Creativity is most important to get relief from stress and peace. So when you are celebrating Thanksgiving Day, there is no need for a big party.

In fact, you can also celebrate it in small creative ways. For example, writing some lines expressing gratitude on a card, or making a card of your choice. Sitting together and reading, writing something, painting, singing, it can be anything. You can also start cooking or gardening. As soon as you start doing work of your interest, you will find that your mind is becoming calm.

4.Remember good things (showing gratitude to others)

If someone has done good to you or helped you, don’t forget to show your gratitude to them. Also keep a diary with you, in which you can note down the help and gratitude towards the person. After a few days, when you read those expressions of gratitude, you will feel happy and your mind will also be calm.

5. Celebrate the present (live in the present)

We keep worrying about future plans. But sometimes the mind remains filled with bitterness regarding old things. Worrying and dwelling on old things makes us feel like we are doing something important. Whereas on the contrary we are doing useless work.

Thanksgiving Day History

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in America. It was started by former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. But it is believed that this day started in Massachusetts, America in the year 1621.

‘Thanksgiving Day’ was first celebrated in the year 1621 by the “Pilgrim Fathers”. He was a European but he had come and settled in the USA. After making his first successful farm in America, he threw a party to say thank you to his neighbors. Which came to be known as ‘Thanksgiving day’.

But this day got recognition when ‘George Washington’ made an official announcement to celebrate this day at the national level in 1789. Since then people celebrate this day as a national festival.

But many historians believe that this day first started in Florida in the year 1565, while some believe that it started in the year 1578 in Canada.

Why is Thanksgiving celebrated?

Thanksgiving Day started being celebrated by the refugees who came from England. On this day they used to plant crop plants, that is why this day was earlier known as “Harvest Day”. And in America, on this day people loved to cook and eat ‘turkey bird’.

From this day, the cultivation of maize and beans began and only fish and seafood were prepared.

In England, crops were harvested by November and people used to do this work with mutual cooperation and at the end, to express their gratitude to each other, they also gave a feast, which came to be called “Thanksgiving Day”.

The Native Americans

Before the Pilgrims came to this place, many Native American tribes lived in this area. The local people knew the place well and spent their days hunting, fishing and harvesting.

Native Americans helped the Pilgrims by providing them with seeds and food, showing them their new home, and giving them the skills and training they needed to survive in the new land. Without the generosity of the Native Americans, the Pilgrims would not have survived another winter.

So to thank them all, the Pilgrims arranged a grand feast after the fall or harvest season, where many delicious dishes were cooked – fish, pumpkins, squash, corn, yams and cranberries as well as wild turkey, Duck and venison meat were also served. , , Captain Miles Standish, leader of the Pilgrims, welcomed all the Native Americans who had helped them so greatly during their first year. This harvest celebration in 1621 is called the “First Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving Meal

In many American families, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; Instead, it now focuses on cooking and sharing hearty meals with family and friends. Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous that it has become synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621.

However, today, according to the National Turkey Federation, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird on Thanksgiving — whether roasted, baked or deep fried. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often organize food drives and host free dinners for those less fortunate.

Thanksgiving Controversy

For some scholars, the jury is still out on whether the feast in Plymouth actually created the first Thanksgiving in the United States. Indeed, historians have recorded other celebrations of Thanksgiving among European settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration.

For example, in 1565, Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés invited members of the local Timucua tribe to dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for the safe arrival of his crew. On December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers arrived at a place called Berkeley Hundred on the banks of the James River in Virginia, they read a proclamation designating that date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Some Native Americans and many others object to how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In his view, the traditional narrative paints a fraudulently sunny picture of the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, concealing a long and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. Since 1970, protesters have gathered at the top of Coles Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, on the day designated as Thanksgiving, to observe a “national day of mourning”. Similar events are held in other parts of the country also.

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Ancient Origins of Thanksgiving

Although the American concept of Thanksgiving developed in the colonies of New England, its roots can be traced to Native Americans as well on the other side of the Atlantic.

Both the Secessionists who came on the Mayflower and the Puritans who arrived soon after brought with them the tradition of possible holidays – days of fasting during difficult or critical moments and days of feasting and celebration to give thanks to God during times of abundance.

As an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, Thanksgiving belongs to the ranks of festivals that span cultures, continents, and millennia. In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans would feast and pay homage to their gods after the autumn harvest. Thanksgiving is also similar to the ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.

Finally, historians have noted that Native Americans had a rich tradition of celebrating the fall harvest with feasting and revelry long before Europeans set foot on the shores of the Americas.

The Settlers

The people involved in the Plymouth Colony were a group of English Protestants called Puritans who wanted to separate from the Church of England. These “separatists” initially moved to Holland. But after 12 years of financial problems, he received funding from English merchants to cross the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the “New World” in 1620. Carrying 101 men, women and children, the Mayflower traveled for 66 days and was scheduled to land where New York City is now located. But windy conditions forced the group to cut their trip short and settle in what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Settle and Explore

As the Puritans prepared for winter, they gathered whatever they could find, including Wampanoag supplies.

One day, Samoset and Tisquantum (known as Squanto), leader of the Abenaki people, visited the settlers. Squanto was a Wampanoag who had experience with other settlers and knew English. Squanto helped the settlers grow corn and use the fish to fertilize their fields. After several meetings, a formal agreement was reached between the settlers and the native people and in March 1621, they came together to protect each other from other tribes.

Wampanoag Leader Made Peace

A Wampanoag leader named Massasoit first negotiated a treaty between Plymouth settlers and the Wampanoag tribe in 1620, which included an agreement that no member of either group would harm any member of the other group. They also pledged to leave their weapons at home when trading to ensure peaceful trade. For about 10 years, Massasoit and the Pilgrims remained allies, trading English goods for access to Wampanoag lands, natural resources, and other assets.

But tensions began to rise after Massasoit died in 1661 and his son Vamsutta took power. In the years between 1630–1642 alone, approximately 25,000 European colonists arrived, while a devastating plague destroyed more than half the native population. As Atlas Obscura reports, Vamsutta died mysteriously in 1662 while meeting with the Puritans to discuss the issue of discord between the two groups. His successor Metacomet only fanned the fire.

Violation of Treaty Resulted in Bloodshed

In 1675, three natives were executed after murdering a man who acted as a translator for the settlers, further increasing the distrust between the two groups. Metacomet feared that the natives would lose more land due to the new arrivals, and he formed a coalition of various native tribes to protect himself and his resources. By the autumn of 1675, members of the alliance began clashing with the settlers, attacking settlements in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The Narragansett tribe originally wanted to remain neutral, but would not abandon the Wampanoag, who had taken refuge in their camp, or turn away the tribe’s women, children, and elderly or infirm who came to them seeking shelter from the conflict. Were. As a result, the Puritans attacked the Narragansett stronghold, resulting in a bloody battle that killed 600 natives and about 150 settlers.

The Conflict Further Devastated the Indigenous Population.

What later became known as King Philip’s War was named after Metacomet’s English surname. The subsequent conflicts had a profound impact on both the native tribes and the colonies. The Wampanoag kidnapped settlers and demanded ransom, while the settlers plundered and destroyed native villages. Most of the colonies were burned and looted, taking decades to fully recover.

An article in The Historical Journal of Massachusetts states that the battle may have killed as much as 30% of the English population and half of the Native Americans now living in New England. According to It Happened in Rhode Island, the war officially ended when Metacomet was killed, decapitated and dismembered. His remaining associates were executed or sold into slavery in the West Indies. The colonists hung the head of “King Philip” on a nail and displayed it in Plymouth for 25 years as a macabre effigy of the conflict.

Native People Never Really Recovered

Of course, King Philip’s War was not the last or only conflict between natives and colonists. Other battles occurred in Virginia, Connecticut, New York, and elsewhere, and the Native American population never really recovered. For the thriving societies that were already living in what is now the United States when Europeans arrived, the arrival of the settlers was not the beginning of a new world, but the end of a new world.

Modern Thanksgiving

In the 19th century, the modern Thanksgiving holiday began to take shape. In 1846, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the magazine God’s Lady’s Book, campaigned for an annual national Thanksgiving holiday. But it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared two national Thanksgiving days; one in August to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, and another in November to give thanks for the “general blessing.” It is the second one that we celebrate today.

Thanksgiving Day with Pictures

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We hope you liked our English story. This story is not just for kids but for everyone, it’s really a very funny story, if you guys like this story of Thanksgiving Day, please tell us by commenting and share it with as many people as possible.

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