Some Thoughts About Thanksgiving
Each year America has a holiday in November that has taken on almost a religious reverence. It happens tomorrow and we call it Thanksgiving. We give this holiday so much honor that it ranks with us along with Christmas and Easter as an important holiday in the hearts of family and as a nation. But this holiday, so rich with tradition, has it origins in the earliest days of the founding of this nation.For me, I’ve always associated Thanksgiving with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, pumpkin pie and large gatherings of family and friends. It is a time of abundance and being thankful for the richness of life. But, the early years of the explorers who came to the American continent were difficult ones indeed. Those explorers, the Pilgrims, faced harsh weather, unpredictable relations with the natives, disease and other challenges as they carved out homes from the wilderness they found here. Because their earliest homesteads were in the northeast, the winters were harsh. Their ability to build houses that could keep them warm, as well as their ability to find sufficient food, was a constant worry to the men and women trying to raise families in America.
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