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.

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.

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