Author of the first American dictionary, Noah Webster, says Thanksgiving is “a public celebration of divine goodness; also, a day set apart for religious services, specially to acknowledge the goodness of God, either in any remarkable deliverance from calamities of danger, or in the ordinary dispensation of his bounties.”

The tradition of Thanksgiving as a time to focus on God and His blessings dates back almost four centuries. While such celebrations occurred at Cape Henry, Virginia as early as 1607, it is from the Pilgrims that we derive the current tradition of Thanksgiving.

Statistically speaking, American Millennials’ (ages 18-34) worst subject is history. Many know very little about our European ancestors, the Pilgrims, to whom the first Thanksgiving is attributed. These were the first Christian families to settle on the east coast of America. Contrary to modern-day teaching, the main purpose the Pilgrims came to America was NOT religious freedom. They had already gained religious freedom twelve years earlier, in 1608, when they fled England for Holland to escape the extreme persecution from a tyrannical King James I.