Off Topic: Happy Thanksgiving

[Der Kuenstler]

A happy thanksgiving today to all who are celebrating it with their families!



"One of the most traumatic and moving of all the scenes in American history came to pass on the fifth day of April in 1621. There stood a little band of 51 Pilgrims on the shore of Plymouth Bay in what is, today, Massachusetts.

They had endured a terrible winter. One hundred two of them had come to the new land, the New World, on the Mayflower. And January and February of that year of 1621, one half, 51, of the band had died. They were buried in unmarked graves, leveled with the ground, lest the Indians see how few and weak were those that remained. They were buried on Cole’s Hill overlooking the Plymouth Bay.

On that fifth day of April in 1621, the 51 survivors stood and watched the Mayflower leave the shores and waters of America. Not one of the living Pilgrims—not one of these remaining men and women, boarded the ship to return back to their homes in England.

They had come and to find and to build a place of worship in the New World. And despite the hardships that faced them, and the burden of grief that overwhelmed them, they remained to build a new nation on the new continent called America.

After they built their shelters, they first erected their church. And after building the church house, their next structure was a schoolhouse. And the textbook of the school was the Bible.

They elected William Bradford as the governor of their little Pilgrim band. And in the fall time of 1621, God having graciously blessed the seed they had sown and given them a bountiful harvest to reap, Governor William Bradford announced a time of thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving in the New World of America." - Criswell