Thanksgiving - a very American festival

The last weeks of the year are a festive time in most countries; but while Europeans just celebrate Christmas and the New Year, Americans begin their festive season about a month earlier. The feast of Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, is second only in importance to Christmas in the American calendar of feast days.    Thanksgiving is the oldest non-Indian tradition in the United States, and was first celebrated in the year 1621. It was in this year that the men and women in Plymouth, one of the first New England colonies, decided to establish a feast day to mark the end of the farming year.    As devout Protestants, they called their feast day "Thanksgiving", a day on which people could celebrate and give thanks to God for the crops that they had managed to grow and harvest. This was not in fact an original idea, but was based on the English "Harvest Festival", an old custom whereby people gave thanks to God once the crops were all in.    In America however, a successful harvest was more significant than in England, for any failure to bring in an adequate supply of crops could be fatal for a new colony, struggling to set itself up in an alien continent. Several early North Americans colonies failed because the colonists were killed off by disease or fighting, and others perished because they did not have time to prepare enough land and grow enough food for their needs during the long cold winter months. The year 1621 was a particularly bountiful one for the Plymouth colonists, so they  "gave thanks" for their good fortunes.    In the years that followed, other colonies introduced their own Thanksgiving festivals, each one at first choosing its own date, and many varying the date according to the state of the harvests. In 1789, President George Washington gave an official Thanksgiving Day address in honor of the new Constitution; and Thanksgiving Day, like Independence Day (July 4th) became one of America's great days.    Nevertheless, at first the date was not fixed nationally; indeed, it was not until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving Day should be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. Other presidents made similar proclamations, and the date of Thanksgiving tended to move around until the year 1941, when Congress and the President jointly declared that it should henceforth be fixed on the fourth Thursday of November. Since then, Thanksgiving Day has remained fixed.

Question forming:
When students have made up their questions, divide them into pairs and have them answer each other's questions. Depending on the type of group or class, this can be eithe an oral or a written activity.Then have them swap questions with a friend, and answer each other's questions.

"Put your question in the box"