Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving today!! Wishing great health, safety and prosperity today and also throughout the whole holiday season and beyond….

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Honoring those who discovered our land a long time ago: The Pilgrims and Puritans who started to make this land the free land it became today. August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail to America with 102 passengers, including 40 Pilgrims in a quest to find a land with gold and more. All were were real rough people who learned, taught by Indians to live off the land and make prosperity from scratch led by William Bradford. There were a lot of stories of the famous feast between Plymouth Colony settlers and the Wampanoag Indians in November of 1621, but the outcomes in those days are possible but questionable as they were not exactly documented well. They did not feast on turkey but on deer, seafood including mussels, lobster, and bass, plus fruits including pumpkin. There are also documented legend stories making a Spanish fleet that came ashore in St. Augustine, Florida, not Massachusetts with another, earlier Thanksgiving in North America. in the year 1565. The eventual Puritan migration started across the Atlantic in the year 1630 with the original ship docking Massachusetts Bay Colony after the pilgrims were not heard back from assuming a success as since there was no communication, they were really taking great chances. No other boats were referred to as pilgrims either after the initial Mayflower voyage. The first Thanksgiving in our government was in order celebrating the Battle of Saratoga, by George Washington gave the first Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789 on October 3, 1789, designating for “the People of the United States a day of public thanks giving” which happened to be on a Thursday on the 26th day of November in that year–the original day the holiday was observed. It marking a first national celebration of was to become commonplace in most households. After Washington there were several modifications, but close in proximity was Jefferson’s refusal to celebrate the holiday in standing with his family’s religious beliefs. President Lincoln proclaimed the annual holiday on the final Thursday in the year 1863. Even though real pumpkin was on the original table, pumpkin pie was not a tradition until a molasses shortage in 1705 in Colchester, Connecticut. Cranberries made there way on today’s table due to an advertising campaign by Ocean Spray in the 20th century. A spinoff of Thanksgiving was the invention of the T.V. dinner when Swanson ordered way too much turkey in ’53 and came up with a solution in order to prevent tons of spoilage. Football and Thanksgiving goes back a long way to the year 1876 with the universities of Yale and Princeton. In 1926 Macy’s held the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Butterball turkey caught on in the 1960’s from several years of promotion by the Swift corporation. JFK trialed the run of a first turkey pardon on November 19, 1963, only three days short of his unfortunate assassination. The formalities of pardoning a turkey became tradition in 1989 with President George H. W. Bush. This year will be the first Thanksgiving where several municipalities recommend families not to meet for the holiday. Hopefully by next year this does not continue a new tradition. I love to get together with family and honor our complete freedom and the flag that stands for our great country. More articles on the subject of Thanksgiving and more can be found at the Smithsonian Institute website. Have a wonderful holiday today…

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING!