1. In the United States, Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day is an annual one-day
_______________ to express gratitude for the things one has at the end of the harvest
season. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. The period from Thanksgiving
Day to New Year's Day is often called the _________________________, and the holiday is
nicknamed "Turkey Day".Most people celebrate by gathering at home with family or friends
for a holiday feast. A tradition also exists to share the fruits of the harvest with those who are
_________________________________.
The first recorded Thanksgiving ceremony was on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint
Augustine, Florida. Six hundred Spaniard settlers held a Mass of Thanksgiving for their safe
delivery to the New World, followed by a ______________ and celebration.
On December 4, 1619, a group of 38 English settlers established the first permanent
settlement of the _____________________ of Virginia. The group's charter required that the
day of arrival be observed yearly as a "day of thanksgiving" to God.
Squanto, a Patuxet ____________________ who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught
the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto
had learned English as a slave in Europe and travels in England). Without Squanto's help the
Pilgrims might not have survived in the New World. _______________ who later came to be
called the "Pilgrims" set apart a day to celebrate at Plymouth immediately after their first
harvest, in 1621. In the Plymouth tradition, a thanksgiving day was a church observance,
rather than a feast day. Gradually, an annual Thanksgiving after the _____________
developed in the mid-17th century. This did not occur on any set day or necessarily on the
same day in different colonies in America.
During the 18th ______________ individual colonies commonly observed days of
thanksgiving throughout each year. We might not recognize a traditional Thanksgiving Day
from that period, as it was not a day marked by plentiful food and drink as is today's custom,
but rather a day set aside for _____________ and fasting.

2. In the United States today, certain kinds of ___________ are traditionally served at
Thanksgiving meals:turkey, stuffing, mashed ___________ with gravy, sweet potatoes,
cranberry sauce, corn, other fall vegetables, and pumpkin __________. All of these primary
dishes are actually native to the Americas or were introduced as a new food source to the
Europeans when they arrived.
To feed _____________ at Thanksgiving time, most communities have annual food drives
and corporations sponsor charitable distributions of staple foods and Thanksgiving dinners.
The tradition of giving _______________ to God is continued today in various forms.
holiday, potatoes, prayer, the needy, thanks, Native American, the settlers, food,
harvest, "holiday season", feast, colony, less fortunate, century, pie