Setting aside time to give thanks for one’s blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement of North America.

The first Thanksgiving wasn’t the same holiday we celebrate today — in fact, the Pilgrims didn’t even call it “thanksgiving.”

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The True Story of the First Thanksgiving: The first Thanksgiving wasn’t the same holiday we celebrate today — in fact, the Pilgrims didn’t even call it “thanksgiving.”
Clip: Season 27 Episode 10

The Pilgrims: Explore the converging forces, circumstances, personalities and events that propelled a group of English men and women west across the Atlantic in 1620. The challenges they faced in making new lives for themselves still resonate almost 400 years later: the tensions of faith and freedom in American society, the separation of Church and State, and cultural encounters resulting from immigration.
Season 27 Episode 10 | 1h 52m 9s

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Thanksgiving From Wikipedia