By Amber Burg–The Pilgrims first celebrated Thanksgiving in 1621. They ate food such as corn, wild fowl or deer and pumpkins. Anything they were able to grow in their gardens and fields. They celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast of food because it was their first harvest on the new land.
Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful, to share time with love ones, and eat a meal of plenty. These days it seem that stores skip from Halloween straight to Christmas leaving Thanksgiving out in the cold, lonely. Some people have completely forgotten the meaning of the holiday or stopped celebrating all together. Others have adopted their own kind of holiday traditions.
Some people think with the stores skipping over this holiday that it is forgotten or even lost between the days of October 31 and December 25. In truth, the holiday is not gone completely; it just took on a technology update from the original ways back in 1621. Even today, we share thanks for everything in our lives, just differently. If anyone has not noticed, some Facebook users have been participating in being thankful recently through November. Everyday they get on their Facebook and write what they are thankful for that day. They can be thankful for anything they want to be; they just write it out in a post.
Family traditions certainly have changed for Thanksgiving though. I like to think this is because it has become more personal or molded to a person or a family’s personality. Hannah Hecht, a Morningside student, has an interesting family tradition for Thanksgiving. Last year her Mom had their family all draw out of a hat. The hat held slips with the words appetizer, dessert and main dish written on them. Whoever drew the slip got to pick what it would be for Thanksgiving Dinner. “We ended up with Chex mix, chicken cordon bleu and cake.”
Some people don’t even eat turkey anymore for Thanksgiving. Having chicken, ham or even brisket has seemed to become more popular. It just depends on what everyone likes to eat. It might not be the same way that the Pilgrims first celebrated it but it is still a day to give thanks.
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