A little American history never hurt anyone...

Thanksgiving - since when?

While it seems as though Thanksgiving, our greatest family get-together holiday, has been here forever, it only became our lawful national tradition recently, and not without some bickering, the efforts of a citizen activist and congressional backroom compromises.

The version of Thanksgiving being traditionally associated with a 1621 Pilgrim end-of-harvest feast, which included a guest list of neighboring first-citizen Indians, is the common assumption. While that is our popular vision, the Pilgrims would have used such feasts to celebrate many different harvest occa...