Thanksgiving 2025 is upon us. Happy Thanksgiving to all !
The concept of thanksgiving to God is from the Bible.
For example, see I Thessalonians 5:18: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
In the One Hundredth Psalm, verse 4, the Psalmist exhorts his listeners to
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,
and into his courts with praise:
be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
The American Thanksgiving holiday owes its origin to the famous meal of 1621, which the English colonists (popularly known as the Pilgrims) and their Wampanoag Indian allies celebrated.
I’d heard that story since childhood, but this past year, for the first time in my life, I actually visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims landed, established their colony and held their 1621 Thanksgiving feast .
It was part of a trip with my wife and son, a tour of the Northeast. We visited 15 states and 2 Canadian provinces. (See The Great Northeastern Tour for more about that.)
Here’s a map of Massachusetts by regions. Note “Plimouth Plantation” on the lower right, that’s the place I’m talking about:
A sign at the entrance to the municipality reads “Welcome to Plymouth, America’s Hometown”. And indeed, Plymouth and the other English colonies were the foundation of our nation.
At Plymouth, we visited a seaworthy replica of the original Mayflower. Like the original, this one has also crossed the Atlantic.
The Mayflower was not a passenger ship. In the 1600s there were only warships or cargo ships, and the Mayflower was a chartered cargo ship. Imagine crossing the Atlantic on a crowded cargo vessel, with no radio, no radar, no GPS. But they did it.
This is Leyden street, the first street the Pilgrims set up.
Obviously, these are not the original 1620s houses. The Pilgrims and their descendants didn’t think they needed to preserve their original houses for the benefit of 21st-century tourists. Instead, they continued to modernize their housing through the years.
So for the tourists, a replica of Leyden Street as it was in the 1620s was constructed a few miles away. It’s called Plimoth Patuxet. There you can see what the original colony looked like.
We have a running joke in our family about “fake” tourist attractions. My son calls any tourist attraction that’s not 100% original “fake”. By that standard, Plimoth Patuxet is “fake” But as fakes go, it’s a very impressive one!
Here’s the fort at the top of the hill:
The “Fake Plymouth Colony” even has reenactors who talk as if they are actual 1620s colonists at Plymouth. The ones I heard or spoke to were very knowledgeable and didn’t break character.
Back at the original colony, we saw a statue of the great William Bradford, governor of the colony in the early years.
Here’s what Governor Bradford wrote about the fall of 1621 and the leadup to the famous Thanksgiving meal: “They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwelling against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty; for as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All summer there was no want. And now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first, but afterward decreased by degrees. And besides water fowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, and now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.–And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their out-goings and in-comings…”
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Allan Wall, November 26th, 2025.
Tags: American History, American Indians, God, I Thessalonians, Jesus Christ, Massachusetts, Plymouth Colony, Thanksgiving, The Psalms, Wampanoag Indians, William Bradford