Christmas with a Capital C

The History of Thanksgiving in America

The following list is a brief outline of the history of days of thanksgiving and prayer in America.     

Note:  Discrepancy in the dating of early days of thanksgiving in American history have two possible explanations.  First, some of the earlier settlers used a different calendar than what we use today.  Second, it is important to make [...]

A Historian Looks at Thanksgiving

There is a lot of bad information on the internet about the origin and history of Thanksgiving.  Historian Dr. Jeremy Bangs gives a pretty well balanced presentation of the facts.     

Our knowledge of the 1621 Thanksgiving comes from Winslow and Bradford. Winslow’s choice of words, understood by his contemporaries, implies to us that the Pilgrims gave [...]

Primary Sources for the First Thanksgiving

If you want to know what really went on at the first Thanksgiving “there are 2 (and only 2) primary sources for the events of autumn 1621 in Plymouth: Edward Winslow writing in Mourt’s Relation and William Bradford writing in Of Plymouth Plantation. 

Also, beware of William Bradford’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1623).  It is both widely circulated [...]

The Truth about Thanksgiving

Charles Colson talks about the true meaning behind Thanksgiving in a Breakpoint Commentary 

(Note: I’m sorry that I didn’t properly document the source when I first copied this commentary, and since Breakpoint has redesigned their web site, I have been unable to find it on-line.  Please let me know if you know the original source.  Thanks!  Tom)  

In just [...]