Like many Americans on Thanksgiving, I'll sit down to a delicious feast, perhaps with turkey (or in Texas, often BBQ!). After a little prodding, the guests will say what they're thankful for. Kids will write on a paper craft consisting of turkey "feathers" the things they are grateful for, and it will seem like a sweet list − dog, no school, mom. We'll watch football and eat too much pumpkin pie.

I think this is good and necessary. Daily gratitude has been scientifically shown to have health benefits.

But I also think it's important to remember the reason we are able to give thanks on a special day set aside for gratitude. Without the Pilgrims' brave quest for religious freedom, and their "First Thanksgiving" in 1621, we wouldn't have Thanksgiving as we know it or now, likely, even a country as incredible as America.

The first Thanksgiving centered around something we often gloss over here in America. "Pilgrims," the term we now apply to all the Mayflower passengers and other settlers who came to America around the 1620s, came to a new land so they could worship God freely.

We know that 102 of........

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