Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States. It is a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the prior year.

Thanksgiving is commonly known as the “First Thanksgiving.” The Pilgrims celebrated it after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. For more than two centuries, Thanksgiving has been celebrated by single colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the thick of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday held each year in November.

In September 1620, a small ship called the “Mayflower” left Plymouth, England, holding 102 passengers and a mixture of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other people lured by the agreement of prosperity and land ownership in the “New World.” One month later, the “Mayflower” crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims began work to form a village at Plymouth. After a precarious and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River.

Throughout the start of the first brutal winter, most colonists remained on board the ship, where they endured exposure to scurvy and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Only half of the Mayflower’s passengers and crew survived; the remaining four moved to shore and met a member from the Abenaki tribe. Days later, they meet Squanto from another tribe. He taught the Pilgrims survival skills, how to cultivate corn, and helped them ally with the Wampanoag, a local tribe. In November 1621, after the Pilgrims first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of Native American allies and the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, which is now remembered as America’s “first thanksgiving.”

The pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought threatening the year’s harvest.

In 1789, George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States. In his proclamation, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the U.S. Constitution.