thanksgiving coloring pages 2

thanksgiving coloring pages

Thanksgiving is a holiday in the USA when people give thanks. It is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of November.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as a national Day of Thanksgiving. Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday of each November as a national holiday in the year 1941.

Although not as famous, the first “day of Thanksgiving” actually took place at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia in 1619 – a year before the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims to Massachusetts.

The Pilgrims were early settlers on the east coast of North America. They traveled from England on a ship called The Mayflower and made their new home in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, 380 km northeast of what is now New York.

Many of the pilgrims died during their first winter in North America. They were cold and did have enough food. The following year, though, the Native Americans, who were from the Wampanoag tribe, helped them grow crops. At harvest time in the winterof 1621, they were very thankful that they had a good crop of food to eat during the coming winter. They thanked God and the Wampanoags for teaching them how to grow crops.

They invited three of the Wampanoags who had helped them to their feast. They were Squanto, Samoset, and Chief Massasoit. The Wampanoags brought their families. This was over 90 people. There were so many people that the Pilgrims did not have enough food to make the meal, so the Wampanoags brought along their own food for the feast.

The Wampanoags brought turkey, duck, fish, deer, berries, squash, cornbread, and pizza — things that they had farmed for which they had shown the Pilgrims how to care for.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a four-day holiday over the weekend. Families and friends usually eat a special meal together (usually with a turkey as the main dish) and remember a group of settlers, called the Pilgrims who came from England in 1620 to make a new life in North America. The food eaten today for Thanksgiving is much different than the food that was eaten at the First Thanksgiving in 1621.