Thanksgiving is a major holiday celebrated in the USA and
Canada, with origins dating back centuries to Colonial times.
The notion of celebrating a harvest of plenty was dramatic event
in early Colonial America, since food supplies were far from
dependable. Years of massive starvation were as common as times
of plenty. Although Native Americans were known to have harvest
celebrations for centuries, if not millennia, before arrival of
Europeans, the quintessence of Thanksgiving in all regions was a
joint celebration of colonists and indigenous peoples, sharing
the bounty of autumn and their common survival. Complicating the
history of Thanksgiving are the contrary ciaims of a number of
distinct North American locations regarding where the first
Thanksgiving was celebrated. It is likely that Thanksgiving
celebrations arose independently in several distinct locations
along the Eastern Seaboard, and these celebrations had several
common denominators including the worship of God and the use of
the word Thanksgivin