Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Author: Andrew Smith

A Traditional American Thanksgiving

Amid all the stuffing, turkey, and pumpkin pie it’s useful to reflect for a moment on precisely what we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. Every American knows the story of the First Thanksgiving: seeking religious freedom, the Pilgrims established a colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Native Wampanoag taught them how to plant corn and hunt. When the crops were harvested, the Pilgrims celebrated the First Thanksgiving by gobbling up turkeys, saucing cranberries, mashing corn, and squashing pumpkins to make pies.

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