Thanksgiving: historie og traditioner

In the year 1620 a small group of Englishmen landed on the East Coast of America in what is

now Massachusetts. They belonged to different Calvinistic creeds, home in England they had

risen in rebellion against the Anglican Church and therefore had to leave England. At first they

went to Leyden in Holland but found soon out that they could not avoid persecution here either.

On the Mayflower 102 Puritans, the Pilgrim Fathers as they were called later, sailed across the

Atlantic Ocean to find the religious freedom, which they had missed in Europe. They had gotten

financial aid for the voyage from The London Company, which ran the colony of Virginia and

was keen to support the immigration to Virginia, an English colony, which was doing well by

tobacco trade already. The Puritans sat the course towards this colony but they never reached

Virginia. They had been beaten off course and landed in south of what is Boston today and

established a colony which they named Plymouth Plantation.

The first winter in the new country was hard and took its toll. About half of the Englishmen

died, but the survivors succeeded in clearing forest and getting on in so good terms with some