What is the purpose of Thanksgiving?
966182
It is to commemorate the early pilgrims who came here, suffered greatly, and finally raised enough crops to have a harvest festival.  The pilgrims and the Indians, who were friendly for the most part, held a big feast to celebrate the harvest and give thanks for having survived.\n\nWe don't give gifts, but we have big family feasts, and often a tradition of watching the Macy's parade (from New York City) on TV, and then there are the football games.  \n\nOf course, there are households that do not have televisions, and even a few where the television is turned off and people play games or read or enjoy conversation.  But the heart of the holiday is the feast, usually including a roast turkey, stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin or mince pies.  There are a lot of other things some people include, but those are the really traditional elements.
922967
You are going to be alone on thanksgiving? Well, prepare yourself a meal, give thanks to what you have. God bless.
952296
Yes, One nice thing about Thanksgiving is the people who break bread with us love us and are with us for that reason,not for your gravy LOL. Also, I bet it`s not as bad as you think.God bless and enjoy your day and friends
761160
In MY family, instead of saying a long, boring prayer, we go around the table---starting with the oldest person there---and each of us names something we are truly thankful about.\nIt makes you appreciate the reason for the holiday, and be grateful for all that you truly HAVE!
729756
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks (traditionally to God) at the close of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.\n\nThe first known thanksgiving feast or festival in North America was celebrated by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the people he called "Tejas" (members of the Hasinai group of Caddo-speaking Native Americans) on 23 May 1541 in Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, to celebrate his expedition's discovery of food supplies.[3] In the sense of a feast in gratitude to God celebrated by Europeans in North America, this has a claim to be the true first North American Thanksgiving.\n\nIn the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863:
733457
Thanksgiving was instituted by the pilgrim who came over on the Mayflower.\nHistorytelevison has an article  on it, but they apparently have myths associated with it. I didn't read it all, but it came up when I "yahooed" thanksgiving and found the enclosed reference below.
904775
The settlers came to the new world and found Indians. They came in peace and had a feast together, then....BOOM. We screwed them for their land and ambushed them when they weren't expecting it. That's why the Native Indians of today don't pay tax, it's almost like an "I'm Sorry" and a thank you from the government. Our government discloses that part of Thanksgiving to make it seem all nice and pretty and full of thanks. But I don't see how you can say thanks when you stole it.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!
823094
The United States\n\nIn 1621, after a hard and devastating first year in the New World the Pilgrim's fall harvest was very successful and plentiful. There was corn, fruits, vegetables, along with fish which was packed in salt, and meat that was smoke cured over fires. They found they had enough food to put away for the winter.\n\nThe Pilgrims had beaten the odds. They built homes in the wilderness, they raised enough crops to keep them alive during the long coming winter, and they were at peace with their Indian neighbors. Their Governor, William Bradford, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving that was to be shared by all the colonists and the neighboring Native American Indians.\n\nThe custom of an annually celebrated thanksgiving, held after the harvest, continued through the years. During the American Revolution (late 1770's) a day of national thanksgiving was suggested by the Continental Congress.\n\nIn 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. By the middle of the 19th century many other states also celebrated a Thanksgiving Day. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln appointed a national day of thanksgiving. Since then each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of each November as the holiday.\n\nhttp://www.holidays.net/thanksgiving/story.htm\n\nhope this helps
875692
The common idea is that Thanksgiving originated with the Pilgrims. Most Americans have this idea that when the Pilgrims landed in America and settled themselves they wanted to give thanks and appreciation for making it through the long journey. Also, they ended up sharing their feast with the Native Americans. Or did they? \n\nThe fact is that the first Thanksgiving was shared between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. The celebration was more of a harvest festival with sports, games, food, dancing, singing, and revelry. When it comes to the food they ate the menu wasnt much like todays. Instead, it consisted of venison, fowl, and other foods prepared by the pilgrims. \n\nInterestingly enough the first Thanksgiving as we know it did not create a yearly tradition among the pilgrims. Partly because the following year was a poor one and because many new settlers had arrived, Thanksgiving became a celebration that was only observed occasionally over the following centuries. However, thanks to the Revolutionary War all of America celebrated Thanksgiving together in 1777. But, that still didnt get the tradition going like it is today. It wasnt until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving that the tradition really became part of Americas culture. The only other change was when Franklin Roosevelt changed the date to the fourth Thursday in 1939. \n\nOf course, you may have learned a different Thanksgiving story in school or you may be one who believes Thanksgiving as a celebration shared by the Indians and the Pilgrims took part in their celebration. There is no shortage of ideas about how Thanksgiving originated. However, the above account is one that is traditionally accepted by Americans and the one that most people tend to believe.
964174
The roots of this holiday go as far back as 1621 when the Pilgrims who arrived in the New World from England celebrated a particularly bountiful harvest following a very harsh winter earlier in the year.  \n\nThanksgiving was originally intended to be just that – a day of giving thanks for all that we have been blessed with:  homes to shelter us, food to sustain us, friends and family to support us, and the freedom to worship and live in any way that we might choose.   I could tell you that this warm and fuzzy sentimental tradition is still carried out today, but I would be lying.  Thanksgiving has become all about the food, and it is viewed as the final hurdle we must cross in order to unabashedly start reveling in the Christmas season. \n\nThe Pilgrims were members of the English Separatist Church, and sailed to Holland in order to flee from religious persecution.  They did experience more religious freedom while there, but became disillusioned with the Dutch way of life, viewing their way of living as ungodly.  Eventually, the Pilgrims managed to strike up a deal with a London stock company, who helped to finance this pilgrimage to America.  Oddly enough, only about one-third of those aboard the ship (for those of you who don’t know it was called the Mayflower) were actually religious Puritans.  The remainder of the men on board were hired by the stock company to protect their interests.  \n\nSo as the story goes, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620.  The Pilgrims were unprepared for the harsh New England winter that lay ahead of them, and by the following fall 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower had perished.  However, the harvest of 1621 was bountiful, and the Pilgrims decided to celebrate with a feast, including the Indians who had helped them to survive through that first year.  The feast lasted for three days, and did not include the traditional items we think of when we think of Thanksgiving dinner today.  The meal included wild duck and geese, venison, boiled pumpkin, fish, berries, clams, lobster, dried fruit, and watercress.  \n\nThanksgiving was celebrated off and on over the next few hundred years until it was finally established as a legal holiday by Congress to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November every year in 1941.
824906
When the Pilgrims came over from England they were greeted by American Indians who shared a great feast with them. We celebrate this feast every year the 4th Thursday in November. It is just a special time with friends and relatives-with too much food but much joy. No presents are exchanged, just love!
875691
Ha, I found what I was looking for:\n\n"The use of the turkey in the USA for Thanksgiving relates back to Lincoln's nationalization of the holiday in 1863. Since a turkey could feed more than a chicken, those were sent to the troops instead as a more cost-effective feast."
774453
Look who is talking.\nWhen turkeys mate they think of swans.\n\nThe very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.\n\nUse: spell-check more often.
389664
Thanksgiving, at it's most basic, is a harvest festival to thank GOD[1] and neighbors for providing enough food to last through the winter. Today, it is more of a celebration of abundance: whether of food, friends, or other 'blessings'.\n\nYou can have Thanksgiving at someone's house by cooking a large meal there on the fourth Thursday in November (US) and inviting friends and family to share in it. Different families have traditional meals, though a typical modern dinner might include Turkey, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, a vegetable dish, a jello dish, and Pumpkin Pie.\n\n\n[1] Since Thanksgiving (as such) was a Colonial American celebration, this would be the Christian God as followed by the majority of the settlers at the time. As Thanksgiving is analogous to harvest festivals occuring in many other religions, this designation is not necessarily exclusive
725825
It's about giving Thanks for the things we have. To be cherful and be together with family and friends. To share what we have with other's who do not have so much. It's about the feeling you get when you help some one out of troubles. It's when you feel the love that comes from spreading the cheers. That is what Thanksgiving is all about.
893601
its an american holiday celebrating the pilgrims and indians gathering to share a meal after a bountiful summer, the indians, or native americans, taught the settlers how to hunt game in this country and how to grow corn, squash and beans and how to preserve them to last through the winter so they wouldnt starve, the pilgrims landed in the north east and it gets quite cold and snowy there in winter, they gave thanks to the Indians for their help and thanked their god that they had the help of the native peoples to help them survive.
894573
Thanksgiving is a religious holiday that is in a special category.  It isn't a Biblical holiday, but it isn't specifically the holiday of another religion either.  The Orthodox often don't celebrate it specifically, but many others do.\n\nThe origins of Thanksgiving were from Christians who wanted to imitate the Jewish Feast of Sukkot, so from that perspective there are some Jewish concepts behind it - but we already have Sukkot just a month earlier.\n\nGiving thanks is very important in Judaism.  We bless the food before we eat and we say Birchot HaMazon (Grace After Meals), while most Christians only bless before meals.  There is much more prayer that occurs every day in Judaism so giving thanks is not restricted just to Thanksgiving.