The first myth is that “tradition” is in stasis or static. This is not true – every tradition whether within a family or within a culture is in transition. The object of social events is to strengthen familial or cultural ties – such is the famed “Thanksgiving Dinner”. What one eats or where it originates from is not as important as forming and sustaining the bond.

Second, cultural myths are always being developed and refined. Over the course of time Americans have collectively incorporated symbols that help identify an observance and have discarded those that no longer speak to the event. So creation/origin stories will emerge, it’s okay that we have 3 or 5 or more stories about Thanksgiving. Some stories are better than others and those get retold; some are a bit scary and those get forgotten – especially when they do not strengthen national identity or nationalism.

In the US for example, everyone has a Thanksgiving Dinner. Even shelters and homeless missions offer one. The point is that this meal is a collective “communion” of American ideals in which we “remember” our founding fathers, their hopes and aspirations as colonists/missionaries/intellectuals/searchers for religious freedom/etc.

It is a collective communion because it is celebrated by everyone – otherwise, why would Asian-Americans or Hispanics celebrate a holiday that is outside their experience? If it were merely a commemoration of the first colonists then this would only be something observed in the New England States and only by the descendants of those pilgrims. The people of Hawaii and the people of the Southwest have a completely different founding experience (Hawaii with origins in Japan; some Hispanics with origins in Spain).

Thanksgiving, while couched in religious language, isn’t really a religious observance, it is a civil observance. It gives all Americans (and Canadians, respectively) a day in which a Nation’s people can bond and celebrate their common ideals. Now if they choose to celebrate that in a Jewish or Christian interpretation that’s fine, if they choose to celebrate that in an Islamic interpretation that’s fine, etc. The religious prespective, as a component part, is not as important as the social-cultural one when contemplating national identity. For this reason even atheists and agnostics celebrate the day.

That said:
Thanks be to God whose love is everlasting!
May you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Everday should be Thanksgiving. We should always be thankful for what we have and what GOD provides for us everyday. This is not always the case and I am as guilty as the next, but GOD loves us anyways.

“There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” — Acts 4:34-35

That passage makes it clear that individual Christians owned property, and they were very generous in helping those in need. They were not required to give all their earnings to the community, but they gave of their own free will.

The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Northern America. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now called Newfoundland, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving. Other settlers arrived and continued these ceremonies. He was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him – Frobisher Bay.

At the same time, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, also held huge feasts of thanks. They even formed ‘The Order of Good Cheer’ and gladly shared their food with their Indian neighbours.