Share your Thanksgiving Day Traditions

Thanksgiving is a feast of traditions. Each family has their own traditions that make their holiday celebrations complete. Most of these family get-togethers are often celebrated with an established Thanksgiving Dinner.
A few years ago we started a new tradition, which I love to share with you.
Year after year we used the same tablecloth, dishes and silverware, precious heritages of our Grandmother. Eating the common classical turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, olives, cranberries, pumpkin and apple pie. Saying the traditional Thanksgiving Day Prayers, giving thanks for the countless blessings enjoyed.
Until my little cousin came up with an unorthodox idea. Why not write our words of gratitude on the family tablecloth, including name and year, with permanent fabric markers? After a few years of cherishing this new tradition, the tablecloth gets more and more colorful and sentimental. This year I intend to buy some porcelain markers to perpetuate our gratitude on grandma’s china. She would have loved it!

Do you have any new or special Thanksgiving Day Traditions you want to share?

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Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is one of the most favorite holidays. Who can resist the wonderful aroma of tender turkey mixed with the spicy savory smell of apple and pumpkin pie, bringing sweet memories and happiness?
It’s the time of getting together. Of having a big family dinner together. But what is the true history of Thanksgiving?

For centuries people have celebrated harvest rituals and ceremonies to express their gratitude for the fertile earth, crops and life. However, the first Thanksgiving Day celebrated was in 1620, when the first colonists sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World.
Because they arrived too late to grow crops, their first winter – without fresh food, was very difficult and many people died. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn in the unfamiliar soil and how to prepare these unknown crops. In the next autumn, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be grateful for, so a feast was celebrated together with the Indians.

Every harvest the colonists celebrated this feast of thanks and finally in 1789 George Washington proclaimed November 26 as “A Day of Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer.” Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a Day of Thanksgiving.