
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ah yes, Thanksgiving. Time when we give thanks for our blessings, eat a FEAST in honor of them, plus or minus creating a shopping list for the shopping bonanza ahead. Today, we look at the origins of Thanksgiving and what made it happen. One day, a ship originally headed for Virginia, on November 19th, 1620, landed at Plymouth Rock in present-day Massachusetts. These people (now known as the pilgrims) were escaping religious persecution in their homeland of England, having bounced back- and- forth from Holland and England. After landing at Plymouth Rock (which I have actually seen; not that impressive), they set up camp. The winter was brutal that year. Normally sound people decided to settle in Massachusetts, causing the death of many in the winter. Disease was rampant through the colony. Living sucked. To escape religious shaming to get to cold and freezing temperatures didn't seem like a good idea at the time. The next spring, a Wampanoag and Squanto came along the struggling town and saw the condition. They had allowed them to settle there in the first day due to the fact that they felt that the English would protect the city from rival nations. What appalled them was the farming techniques used by the European's. The techniques that worked in England and Europe didn't work on Cape Cod. The tribe taught the Pilgrim's methods of farming that was better than the European method. One of my favorite methods was using dead fish as fertilizer for plants. Odd, but, it worked really well, and the pilgrims thrived. As a show of thanks the following November, the settlers had a feast to celebrate the harvest. The Wampanoag came over with 90 Indians to see what the ruckus was. Turned out it was a feast, and the settlers had no way to accommodate for them. So, the tribe went hunting, and after that, was three days of celebration. The Thanksgiving traditions we know today came from the declaration from President Abe Lincoln in 1863, feeling it would unite the nation, which was dealing with a heavy war. What are your favorite Thanksgiving memories? What is your favorite food from the feast? Tell us below. Happy Thanksgiving, fodder.