The European Origins of Thanksgiving

Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving.

While people think of Thanksgiving as a North American holiday, one that goes back to the time of the earlier European settlers in North America. The fact is that Thanksgiving's roots actually go back much further. Thanksgiving's roots go actually across the Atlantic back into Europe which is where a lot of the harvest celebrations originated at least in terms of European Western society. You can find a lot of these harvest celebrations actually worldwide.

But, particularly around in Europe and just where you had like the cycles. And Europe definitely oscillates between warm and cold. There are very strong definite seasons and you have the harvest period when you brought in all the crops that you had planted throughout the season, toiled over and you are getting ready to ride out the winter and then you have the harvest. Often times people would celebrate by having a feast during this time.

And, places like Northern France and England were no exception to this. And, many of these groups would get together and there would be, I mean these feasts would last over a period of days not just one meal. And as we start actually entering into a period of European migration to the new world a lot of these folks brought their customs with them."