Story of the first thanksgiving for kids: Thanksgiving Story for Kids

Thanksgiving Story for Kids

Thanksgiving Day is approaching. This year, the day, which is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of November, falls on November 25. On this day, pageants are held on thanksgiving at schools, children don headdresses colored with craft-store feathers and share tables with classmates wearing black construction paper hats. Kids wish each other and love the feeling of togetherness!

Do you know that there is an interesting history behind the Thanksgiving celebrations? Let us look into the history & dive into the Thanksgiving story.

The real Thanksgiving story behind the celebrations

At the beginning of the 17th century, a group of English Protestants, called Puritans (aka Pilgrims), wanted to break away from the Church of England. The group moved to Holland but suffered financial problems there. 

In 1620, they received funds from English merchants and a group of 101 people, including women and children. These funds were left in a small ship called the Mayflower in September to settle at a different place near present-day New York City.

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After a tiring journey of 66 days, the group dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination, at the mouth of the Hudson River. 

One month later, the Puritans sailed through Massachusetts Bay and began the work of setting up a village at Plymouth. However, the visitors spent their first winter on the ship.

Historians say that half of the settlers died of cold and a contagious disease on the ship. In March, the remaining settlers moved to the nearby coastal area, which was then inhabited by many Native American tribes.

One day, Samoset, a leader of the local Abenaki people, and Tisquantum (also known as Squanto) visited the settlers. Squanto, who belonged to the local Wampanoag community, knew English. Squanto taught the Puritans, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. After several meetings, in March 1621, a formal agreement was made between the native people and the settlers, also mentioned in the history books as colonists, for mutual cooperation.

Watch this video to help your kids know all about the Thanksgiving story!

The first thanksgiving ever!

In November 1621, after the colonists’ first successful corn harvest, their Governor William Bradford planned a celebratory feast. Four settlers were also sent to hunt for the feast. When Wampanoag people heard the gunshots, they thought the colonists might be coming for war and alerted their leader, Massasoit. Massasoit then left with around 90 men for the English settlement.

Related Reading: Fun Thanksgiving Activities for Kids to Keep Them Busy!

After reaching there, Massasoit discovered that the English were only hunting for the harvest celebration. The Native Americans then joined the settlers in their celebrations. Massasoit also sent some of his own men for hunting.

A grand feast was organized, in which the English and native men, women, and children ate together. The meal consisted of deer, corn, shellfish, and roasted meat. There were no sweet dishes as the Mayflower’s sugar supply had finished by then. The celebrations went on for three days. People of the two communities also sang and danced together.

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Also read: Heartwarming Happy Thanksgiving Wishes for Kids to Share with Everyone

Declaration of Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday

After the November 1621 celebratory feast at Plymouth, Puritans held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623, following a year of drought. During the American Revolution (1765-1791), the Continental Congress called for one or more days of thanksgiving a year. 

In 1789, George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the US national government. He also called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy ending of the country’s independence war. His successors John Adams and James Madison also followed the trend.

In 1817, New York became the first of several US states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday.

In 1827, the famous journalist, Sarah Josepha Hale, launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to government representatives. Finally, at the height of the Civil War in 1863, Abraham Lincoln scheduled Thanksgiving Day for the final Thursday in November.

In 1939, Franklin D Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week during the Great Depression. However, Roosevelt’s plan faced strong opposition and two years later he had to reluctantly shift the day to the fourth Thursday in November.

Current

traditions and rituals of Thanksgiving day

In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance. It now revolves around cooking and sharing food with family and friends.

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According to the National Turkey Federation, about 90 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common activity on this day and communities often offer free dinners for the poor. Parades are taken out in cities and towns across the United States.

Controversies around Thanksgiving

There are apprehensions whether the feast at Plymouth really constituted the first Thanksgiving in the US, as some historians have recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America.

For instance, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in Florida’s St Augustine in 1565 after the safe arrival of his crew.

Apart from that, some Native Americans have issues with how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the world.

In their view, the traditional narrative paints a deceptive picture of the relations between the Puritans and the Wampanoag people. They believe it overlooks the bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers, which resulted in the death of thousands of people. It is said that the peace between the Native Americans and settlers lasted for around 50 years.

Now, the Wampanoag people do not take part in the Thanksgiving Day celebrations, as they see it as a “reminder of betrayal and bloodshed”. Since 1970, every year people of the community assemble at the top of Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, and observe the day as “National Day of Mourning.” Some people say it’s time to reevaluate the meaning and celebration of the holiday.

A welcome holiday

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Irrespective of the controversy surrounding the day, there is no doubt that it is many people’s favorite holiday. From the amazing turkey dinner to the cozy gathering of family and friends, the day provides the fun of Christmas, minus the stress of decorating and gift-giving. It provides us an opportunity for a stress-free holiday focused on food and fun. 

Many people like the day for its welcoming spirit and sense of community. Thanksgiving is a holiday that welcomes all, regardless of religious beliefs or cultural traditions. It also provides time to reflect on our lives, appreciate what we have, who we are, and where we are right now. 

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Related Reading: Best & Important Character Traits for Kids That All Parents Must Instill

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How did Thanksgiving get its name?

In November 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast. The feast was organized by the colonists to thank the native people for their cooperation. Hence, it is acknowledged as Thanksgiving day today.

When was Thanksgiving declared a public holiday?

On September 28, 1789, the First Federal Congress in the United States, passed a resolution seeking the president’s nod to declare Thanksgiving a public holiday.
A few days later, George Washington, the first President of the US, proclaimed November 26 (Thursday) as a “Day of Public Thanksgiving”. However, it was President Abraham Lincoln, who in 1863 proclaimed Thanksgiving a public holiday to be commemorated every year on the last Thursday of November.

Why did the date of Thanksgiving change every year?

In 1939, the last year of the Great Depression, the last Thursday of November was on the last day of the month. US President Franklin D Roosevelt became concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might dampen economic recovery.
He, therefore, moved Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. Some 32 states consequently issued similar proclamations, but 16 states refused to accept the change. As a result, for two years two days were celebrated as Thanksgiving.
To end the confusion, on October 6, 1941, Congress set last Thursday in November as a fixed date for the holiday.

The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue | History

Chief Ousamequin shares a peace pipe with Plymouth Governor John Carver.
California State Library

In Thanksgiving pageants held at schools across the United States, children don headdresses colored with craft-store feathers and share tables with classmates wearing black construction paper hats. It’s a tradition that pulls on a history passed down through the generations of what happened in Plymouth: local Native Americans welcomed the courageous, pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory feast.

But, as David Silverman writes in his new book This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, much of that story is a myth riddled with historical inaccuracies. Beyond that, Silverman argues that the telling and retelling of these falsehoods is deeply harmful to the Wampanoag Indians whose lives and society were forever damaged after the English arrived in Plymouth.

Silverman’s book focuses on the Wampanoags. When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, the sachem (chief) Ousamequin offered the new arrivals an entente, primarily as a way to protect the Wampanoags against their rivals, the Narragansetts. For 50 years, the alliance was tested by colonial land expansion, the spread of disease, and the exploitation of resources on Wampanoag land. Then, tensions ignited into war. Known as King Philip’s War (or the Great Narragansett War), the conflict devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals. Wampanoags today remember the Pilgrims’ entry to their homeland as a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.

We spoke with Silverman, a historian at George Washington University, about his research and the argument he makes in his book.

This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving

Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony’s founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story.

The Myth of Thanksgiving

How did you become interested in this story?

I’ve had a great many conversations with Wampanoag people, in which they talk about how burdensome Thanksgiving is for them, particularly for their kids. Wampanoag adults have memories of being a kid during Thanksgiving season, sitting in school, feeling invisible and having to wade through the nonsense that teachers were shoveling their way. They felt like their people’s history as they understood it was being misrepresented. They felt that not only their classes, but society in general was making light of historical trauma which weighs around their neck like a millstone. Those stories really resonated with me.

What is the Thanksgiving myth?

The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story—it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.

What are the most poignant inaccuracies in this story?

One is that history doesn’t begin for Native people until Europeans arrive. People had been in the Americas for least 12,000 years and according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of time. And having history start with the English is a way of dismissing all that. The second is that the arrival of the Mayflower is some kind of first-contact episode. It’s not. Wampanoags had a century of contact with Europeans–it was bloody and it involved slave raiding by Europeans. At least two and maybe more Wampanoags, when the Pilgrims arrived, spoke English, had already been to Europe and back and knew the very organizers of the Pilgrims’ venture.

Most poignantly, using a shared dinner as a symbol for colonialism really has it backward. No question about it, Wampanoag leader Ousamequin reached out to the English at Plymouth and wanted an alliance with them. But it’s not because he was innately friendly. It’s because his people have been decimated by an epidemic disease, and Ousamequin sees the English as an opportunity to fend off his tribal rebels. That’s not the stuff of Thanksgiving pageants. The Thanksgiving myth doesn’t address the deterioration of this relationship culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip’s War, and also doesn’t address Wampanoag survival and adaptation over the centuries, which is why they’re still here, despite the odds.

The Thanksgiving Feast

How did the Great Dinner become the focal point of the modern Thanksgiving holiday?

For quite a long time, English people had been celebrating Thanksgivings that didn’t involve feasting—they involved fasting and prayer and supplication to God. In 1769, a group of pilgrim descendants who lived in Plymouth felt like their cultural authority was slipping away as New England became less relevant within the colonies and the early republic, and wanted to boost tourism. So, they started to plant the seeds of this idea that the pilgrims were the fathers of America.

What really made it the story is that a publication mentioning that dinner published by the Rev. Alexander Young included a footnote that said, “This was the first Thanksgiving, the great festival of New England.” People picked up on this footnote. The idea became pretty widely accepted, and Abraham Lincoln declared it a holiday during the Civil War to foster unity.

It gained purchase in the late 19th century, when there was an enormous amount of anxiety and agitation over immigration. The white Protestant stock of the United States was widely unhappy about the influx of European Catholics and Jews, and wanted to assert its cultural authority over these newcomers. How better to do that than to create this national founding myth around the Pilgrims and the Indians inviting them to take over the land?

This mythmaking was also impacted by the racial politics of the late 19th century. The Indian Wars were coming to a close and that was an opportune time to have Indians included in a national founding myth. You couldn’t have done that when people were reading newspaper accounts on a regular basis of atrocious violence between white Americans and Native people in the West. What’s more, during Reconstruction, that Thanksgiving myth allowed New Englanders to create this idea that bloodless colonialism in their region was the origin of the country, having nothing to do with the Indian Wars and slavery. Americans could feel good about their colonial past without having to confront the really dark characteristics of it.

Can you explain the discrepancies in English and Wampanoag conceptions of property?

It’s incorrect as is widely assumed that native people had no sense of property. They didn’t have private property, but they had community property, and they certainly understood where their people’s land started and where it ended. And so, when Europeans come to the Americas and they buy land from the Wampanoags, the Wampanoags initially assume the English are buying into Wampanoag country, not that they’re buying Wampanoag country out from under their feet.

Imagine a flotilla of Wampanoag canoes crosses the Atlantic and goes to England, and then the Wampanoags buy land from the English there. Has that land now passed out of the jurisdiction of England and become the Wampanoags’? No, that’s ridiculous. But that’s precisely what the English were assuming on this side of the Atlantic. Part of what King Philip’s War was about is Wampanoag people saying, ‘Enough, you’re not going to turn us into a landless, subjugated people. ’

Did all Wampanoags want to enter into alliance with the English?

From the very beginning, a sizable number of Wampanoags disagreed with Ousamequin’s decision to reach out to [the English] and tried to undermine the alliance. Ousamequin puts down multiple plots to wipe out the colony and unseat him. Some Wampanoags say, ‘Let’s make an alliance with the Narragansetts and get rid of these English. They’ve been raiding our coast for decades, enslaving our people, carrying them off to unknown fates and they can’t be trusted.’ Some Wampanoags believed they caused epidemics and there were prophecies that this would be the end of the People.

When the English arrived, they entered a multilateral Indian political world in which the internal politics of the Wampanoag tribe and the intertribal politics of the Wampanoag tribe were paramount. To the degree the Wampanoags dealt with the English, it was to adjust the power dynamics of Indian country.

You write that during King Philip’s War, efforts to unify different tribes against the settlers weren’t always successful. Why was that?

The politics of Indian country are more important to native people than their differences with colonists. There were no ‘Indians’ when the English arrived. Native people didn’t conceive of themselves as Indians—that’s an identity that they have had to learn through their shared struggles with colleagues. And it takes a long time—they have been here for 12,000 plus years, and there are a lot of differences between them. Their focus is on their own people, not on the shared interests of Indians and very often, what’s in the best interest of their own people is cutting deals with colonial powers with an eye towards combating their native rivals.

How does your telling of these events differ from other existing scholarship?

The main difference has to do with King Philip’s War. The question is whether native people, led by Metacomet, or Philip as the English call him, were plotting a multi-tribal uprising against the English. I think they were. Some of my historian colleagues think it’s a figment of paranoid English imagination. But I see a lot of warning signals building during the 1660s and 70s from Englishmen who lived cheek-by-jowl with Wampanoag people and were terrified of what they were seeing on the ground. I see a pattern of political meetings between native leaders who hated each other. And yet, they were getting together over and over and over again—it all adds up to me.

There’s this tendency to see the English as the devils in all of this. I don’t think there’s any question they’re in the wrong, but it doesn’t let them off the hook to say that native people wouldn’t take it anymore. And regardless of that, I think the evidence shows that native people had reached their limit and recognize that if they didn’t rise up immediately, they were going to become landless subordinates to English authority.

This is about as contrary to the Thanksgiving myth that one can get. That’s the story we should be teaching our kids. They should be learning about why native people reached that point, rather than this nonsense that native people willingly handed off their country to the invaders. It does damage to how our native countrymen and women feel as part of this country, it makes white Americans a lot less reflective about where their privilege comes from, and it makes us a lot less critical as a country when it comes to interrogating the rationales that leaders will marshal to act aggressively against foreign others. If we’re taught to cut through colonial rhetoric we’ll be better positioned to cut through modern colonial and imperial rhetoric.

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90,000 Thanksgiving Day in the USA. | Bilingual Child

Category:English holidays

Traditionally Thanksgiving Day in the USA is celebrated every year on the last Thursday of November – this is the day of praise to the Almighty for the bread and food that he sends.

In this article, we will find out where this tradition came from and, together with our children, we will learn a Thanksgiving song in English.

This holiday can truly be called the most American, as it is inextricably linked with the history of the formation of the American people and culture . The fact is that in 1620, a ship with settlers from England landed on the coast of America near the city of Plymouth. The settlers organized a settlement there – this is how, in fact, the history of the American people began, as we know it now (before that, only Indians lived in America).

The settlers hoped to live a happy and free life in the new land. But they had a hard time. The first winter brought cold, famine and disease. Hundreds of them did not live to see the spring. When spring came, it became clear that you need to start taking care of what they will eat next winter.

Local Indians came to help. They showed how to cultivate the land and, importantly, they opened to the newly minted Americans such a satisfying product as a turkey. All summer the pilgrims grew crops and turkeys, and when autumn came and the crop was harvested, it was decided to organize a holiday in gratitude to God and the locals for their help and salvation from a hungry life.

It was exactly one year after the arrival of the English colonists in New England in November. Since then, this holiday, called Thanksgiving Day, has been celebrated in the United States in November, and turkeys are considered the symbol of the holiday. They are eaten, songs are sung about them, and one of them is publicly pardoned every year by the President of the United States at the Presidential Turkey Pardon ceremony in the White House garden (they say, by presidential decree, one turkey annually avoids the fate of being eaten).

And about the turkey. I suggest you sing this Thanksgiving song in English with your child:

The symbol of the holiday is Plymouth Rock, a rocky place where the colonists allegedly landed in 1620. In this video, the stone itself tells the story of English settlers in a simple and accessible language. Be sure to watch it with your child and tell them the story of Thanksgiving in the USA!

2015: Nothing has changed in Thanksgiving traditions 🙂

So I just suggest downloading additional Thanksgiving materials in English: this is a book to read to children, a poster about the traditions of the holiday and a selection of poems and songs, and we compiled a playlist for you with your favorite songs about Thanksgiving on our channel.

Join the English language through traditions! Get to know English holidays with us! And I have 9 ready for you0005 scenario with detailed game descriptions, glossaries, photos and even a pumpkin pie recipe! Arrange a real journey into the past for your students!

I also ask you to share your Thanksgiving finds in the comments.

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History and traditions of the most family holiday in the USA

32443 Life and culture abroad

Thanksgiving
Day, or Thanksgiving Day, is an American public holiday that
celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday of November. Celebration in 2017
falls on November 23rd. Let’s talk a little about the history and traditions of the main
family holiday, dearly loved by all residents of the United States.

Thanksgiving History

The Thanksgiving story begins in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621. It was there that the pilgrims, who arrived on the North American continent on the ship Mayflower, founded the first English colony in the New World.

There were 102 people on board, but half of them did not survive the winter: the first settlers reached the shore in November, which met them with cold, hunger and disease. With the advent of spring, the surviving settlers began to farm and hunt. The Indians taught them to grow corn and other crops common in North American latitudes.

The result of the joint labors of the pilgrims and the Indians was an unexpectedly rich harvest, harvested in the fall of 1621. The founding fathers were Puritans and had differences with the then dominant Anglican Church in England. It was in search of religious freedom and in the hope of fulfilling the dream of their own church that they set off on the long voyage on the Mayflower. After all the hardships they endured, the harvest became an almost divine blessing for them. And as a token of gratitude to the Lord, they arranged a feast.

The Indians were also invited to the celebration, which lasted three days, who helped the settlers survive the cold and settle in new conditions. Native Americans brought four turkeys to the table. It was this joint meal of the pilgrims with the Indians that became the first Thanksgiving Day.

For a long time, the celebration was popular, but in 1789, by decree of George Washington, Thanksgiving Day acquires national status and is scheduled for November 26th. Subsequently, the official date of the celebration has repeatedly become the subject of controversy. Finally at 19In 1941, a bill was passed in the United States, according to which Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

Family dinner as the main Thanksgiving tradition

Despite the fact that centuries later the holiday has lost some of its original religious meaning, many Americans today attend church services dedicated to Thanksgiving Day. The main tradition is a solemn family dinner, which is held in the house of the eldest family member.

We’ve all watched American movies and know that the “star” of the Thanksgiving holiday table is the baked turkey. She and the pumpkin pie are the culinary symbols of the holiday. Thanksgiving staples also include baked yams (sweet potatoes), mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry and whipped flower sauces, and breadcrumbs turkey filling.

Today, the variety of treats for a celebration depends on the imagination and capabilities of the hostess, however, all recipes, as a rule, include products that were on the table of the founding fathers 400 years ago: poultry, bread, corn, pumpkin, sweet potato, green beans, apples. Before receiving guests, the house is often decorated with bouquets of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves, bunches of spikelets and branches with berries.

Thanksgiving is the most important family holiday for Americans. People put aside all important things to gather in their father’s house and dine with their relatives. Before the meal, family members take turns saying words of gratitude for the gifts on the table, for the blessings of life, and also for the joy of a family meeting.

Thanksgiving Day Parades

Another tradition of the holiday is street parades. Participants dress up as pilgrims and Indians, and on one of the platforms there will definitely be a big bright turkey. The largest parade has been held since 1927 years in New York by Macy’s department store chain. The procession usually runs from Central Park to the entrance to Macy’s between 7th Avenue and Broadway. The parade is known for huge inflatable figures of heroes from American cartoons and comics and brilliant performances of Broadway theater actors. Broadcasts of the Macy’s parade on television annually gather more than 500 million viewers at the screens.