Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving Part I

Some schools are now teaching that the Colonists in Massachusetts were celebrating their being thankful that the Indians helped them during a period of drought. Today, historical revisionists have present multiple versions of the origin of Thanksgiving. There are liberal, antheist, anti-Chrisitan, and Native Ameerican versions of the origin of this American and Christian holiday. In the days prior to Thanksgiving 2010, I wish to present the arrival of the Pilgrims and what we call the first Thanksgiving, upon which is based our present celebration of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

The passengers aboard the Mayflower were looking for a place where they could establish a land where they could worship as they pleased. These passengers were Pilgrims who were persecuted in England by the established state church. While enroute to the New World, they developed a legal document called the "Mayflower Compact."

The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the colonists, later together known to history as the Pilgrims, who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Almost half of the colonists were part of a separatist group seeking the freedom to practice Christianity according to their own determination and not the will of the English Church. It was signed on November 11, 1620 (OS)[1] by 41 of the ship's one hundred and two passengers,[2] in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.

The original document was lost, but the transcriptions in Mourt's Relation and William Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation are in agreement and accepted as accurate. Bradford's hand written manuscript is kept in a special vault at the State Library of Massachusetts. Bradford's transcription is as follows:

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620. Source: Wikipedia.

Contrary to what some anti-Christian revisionists of historical truth falsely teach, the original passengers of the Mayflower were Christians looking for a place to worship freely.