Yes, we both being 1st generation immigrants, do have a lot of Gratitude for Thanksgiving 2013!
Being alive and healthy and living in freedom with new found Friends that became Family is a Blessing.
'Friends are family members without kinship'. -- Ronald Giphart Dutch writer
Like those 1621 Mayflower Pilgrims who celebrated Thanksgiving for God's goodness.
What a fate for half of those passengers that survived the sea and the first harsh winter...
And what a FEAST after those Mayflower conditions:
Sleeping with 80 persons in a cabin made to hold 30 people...
Food - Ship's biscuits that were infested by roaches, weevils and maggots...
Warm meals were too risky because they would set the sails at fire due to winds blowing those flames...
For 66 - Sixty Six days living like that!
Indeed, after a Prosperous Growth during the Summer of 1621 they had a Thanksgiving Celebration for God's goodness... Only 50 pilgrims survived of the original 102
The Food - Wild turkey etc.
as early as 1777 but without an official Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did just that in 1941.
PILGRIMS, NOT PURITANS...
Often those early Mayflower PILGRIMS are being confused with the later PURITANS
The story behind the first U.S. Thanksgiving
Wishing all American readers a very Happy Thanksgiving!
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