<img class="alignleft" src="https://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/tgd3.jpg" width="336" height="444" />Thanksgiving arrives on Thursday making this week filled with family reunions, food, fun, travel, football games, Black Friday, and being thankful.

Not necessarily in that order.

The way we celebrate things today is quite different from how Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving feasts.

Historically, Pilgrims in The Commonwealth of Virginia held Thanksgiving services beginning in 1607. Days of prayer, not days of feasting, but services deeply grounded in religious beliefs and gratitude to their Heavenly Father.

<a href="http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/feast/" target="_blank">Our national holiday stems from the feast held in the autumn of 1621</a> by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians to celebrate the colony's first successful harvest. The colonist didn't call it Thanksgiving, though. <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/mayflower-myths" target="_blank">“To them, a thanksgiving was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, such as the winning of a battle... the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest feast – dancing, singing secular songs, playing games – wouldn’t have been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims’ minds.”</a>

Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation of a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” established what we do today. The basis for our celebration remained the same - thankfulness.

As you go about the preparations this week, spend some time thinking about the origins of the holiday and all the reasons you have to be thankful.
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ff6600;">Happy Thanksgiving!</span></h2>