【英语】感恩节Thanksgiving(由来)

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Thanksgiving(感恩节)

Thanksgiving is an important holiday in America and Canada.

Families gather together and have a large meal consisting of turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, vegetables and pumpkin pie.

But where did it all begin?

The tradition goes back to 1621 when pilgrims who settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts, were celebrating their first successful corn harvest.

Governor William Bradford who organized the feast invited the local Wampanoag Indians to join in the meal.

The year before saw the Mayflower leave Plymouth, England, holding 102 passengers seeking religious freedom or promises of land in the New World.

They eventually landed in America and began settling at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Many did not survive the brutal winter.

Two Indians greeted them and showed the weakened pilgrims how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees and catch fish in the rivers.

This would ensure their survival for a successful harvest to one year later.

An alliance with the local Wampanoag tribe would ensure harmony between the European colonists and native Americans for 50 years.

The feast became known as Thanksgiving for the first time in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought.

And the first national Thanksgiving day was proclaimed by president George Washington in 1789, in which he called upon Americans to express gratitude for the end of the War of Independence.

In 1863, the tradition became a regular holiday in the United States when Abraham Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November should be celebrated as Thanksgiving.

Since then it has been celebrated every year in the United States.