Thanksgiving Day

American Thanksgiving Day it`s a celebration to remind the day when the pilgrims arrived America and were helped by indians to survive their first year.

Thanksgiving story began in 1609.
The pilgrims were a group of persons, members of the English Separatist Church, who had to escape from religious persecution of their country.
At the beginning they traveled from Plymouth, England to Netherlands where they lived and prospered, but after a couple of years the pilgrims became disenchanted with the life style of dutch people, so they decided to leave from there.

Seeking for a better life, they sailed to the New World, America, aboard a ship called "The Mayflower". The long trip was cold and hard, many of the passengers became sick and some others died.
On December 11, 1620 the pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock.
Their first year was devastating, specially during their first winter (of the 110 pilgrims and crew who left England, less than 50 survived), but thanks to native indians help they survived to it.
Certainly the pilgrims wouldn`t have made it without indians help, this is why the remaining colonist decided to celebrate with a feast that it was more like a traditional english harvest festival. It lasted 3 days.

On 1789 George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving. On 1863 President Lincon proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving, and on 1941 it was finally proclaimed by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth thursday in November.

Nowadays for this holiday families usually get together and have a big dinner with many food like butternut squash and apple soup, roast turkey, green bean salad, cranberry relish, and pumpkin pie.

There`re many movies where Thanksgiving Day is illustrated.

Most famous are :

- Alice`s Restaurant (1969)
- Home for the Holidays (1995)
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
- Pieces of April (2003)
- The Ice Storm (1997)

More information at

http://wilstar.com/holidays/thankstr.htm

http://www.holidays.net/thanksgiving/pilgrims.htm

http://www.andrewnixon.com/movies/tday.htm