The 'Thanksgiving' holiday's history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation.
It also has aspects of a harvest festival.
The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a documented 1621 celebration at 'Plymouth' in present-day Massachusetts, and also to a well recorded 1619 event in Virginia.
The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest.
Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620's and 1630's carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England.
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