what is thanksgiving (we dont have it in england)?

Answer 1

History: The English harvest festival predates, perhaps past Pagan as most think it to the times of Roman doings.
Thanksgiving in Canada is weeks before the American version.
Sadly an American President made Thanksgiving a bank holiday in the late 30's to mark a time to begin the Christmas buying season. I think that was all in Wikepedia as well. I researched Wikie back in November to answer a similar question. My take:
Contemporary and recent historical practises: A time when people get together with relatives, some they can not otherwise stand except at Christmas, eat like gluttons, belch, and eat more.
--That Cheeky Lad

Answer 2

In Britain, thanks have been given for successful harvests since pagan times. The celebrations on this day usually include singing, praying and decorating churches with baskets of fruit and food in the festival known as Harvest Festival or Harvest Home or Harvest Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving.
In British churches, chapels and schools, people bring in food from the garden, the allotment or farm. The food is often distributed among the poor and senior citizens of the local community.
In the USA and Canada, the festival is set on a certain day and has become a National Holiday known as Thanksgiving. In North America it has become a national secular holiday with religious origins, but in Britain it remains a Church festival giving thanks to God for the harvest.
I think that thanksgiving is some kind of harvest and i think we do have it in England.

Answer 3

Thanksgiving is a tradition that goes back to the days of the Pilgrim Fathers . Britains Government stipulated that any new settlers in America could keep the land they had settled on as long as they could grow crops in the first year they arrived. it was very hard work for these settlers having to clear the land and plant the seeds but they were sucessful, and they thanked God for it in a way of having a Thanksgiving meal.

Answer 4

Of course you don't! It is an American holiday that celebrated the pilgrims being thankful for the support of the Native Americans that enabled them to survive their first winter in the "new world." Actually, history has it that the Native Americans saved the pilgrims from starvation that day by providing turkeys and other food stuffs. Later, the colonists killed the Native Americans in large numbers to inhabit their land, wrote and broke treaties, and forced them onto reservations where most live to this day, deprived of everything except their culture! Some nations are getting their revenge by running successful gambling casinos and robbing the descendants of ancestors that robbed them. That's what I call poetic justice!
I digress.
Thanksgiving has evolved into a traditional day of gut gorging and bladder bursting where few people even say a blessing over the food. Family feuds and fights abound about anything as trivial as a stuffing recipe or who drank the last of the egg nog.
For some of us though, nasty history aside, it is a day of bonding with family and close friends to celebrate our personal history and love by giving thanks to God and enjoying good food and each other.

Answer 5

The Americans celebrate thanksgiving to mark the safe arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers in the New World after their long sea voyage from England.

Answer 6

LOL - Thanksgiving is a somewhat ironic American Holiday. You see when the original "pilgrims" (people who fled Europe, especially England to avoid religious persecution) first made it to America, they were tired, wet, hungry, and cold (as winter was about to set in). They had nothing and would likely have died. The native peoples of the Americas where the pilgrims landed saw their plight and felt sorry for them and made for them a great feast. This feast is comemorated by Americans the last Thursday of every November to remind us to give thanks for what we have received (or what has been given us) - ergo Thanksgiving. The story of course continued. The good natives also taught the pilgrims how to farm and survive the winter. As thanks for their good deeds, as soon as the pilgrims strengthened they set off on that often held sacred right of "killing savages" and taking their land. A practice that with absolute horrific brutality was continued for the next couple hundred of years until the government of the US was founded and treaties were entered into.

Answer 7

Thanksgiving is the day we celebrat the landing of the early settelers on Plymouth Rock. Suposed to be when they celebrated their first harvest with the Natives that were already there.

Answer 8

Thanksgiving is a celebration at the end of November of each year. It dates back to when the pilgrims arrived here in the Americas. Native Americans and Pilgrims had first dinner together. Today it is usually families getting together eating turkey and tons of food, and getting fat;) hehe..
Each person celebrates it different from games to sports--
but it's really just getting together with your family and being thankful for all the things in life, and an excuse to eat !!

Answer 9

thanksgiving is the most kickass holiday(next to christmas), is basically eating many of the things that the pilgrims ate when they came to america. You have one or two turkeys(depending on how many guests) mashed potatoes(awesome) stuffing(the best part) cranberry sauce(totally awesome), green bean casserole, yams(delicious). and that is only for dinner. and i hate to soung like a pig but you eat until you think you're going to blow up, the food is so good you can't help it! Then desserts- pies!, pumpkin pie, eggnog pie, any pie you can think of bassically.

Answer 10

It's the anniversary of when we kicked the s h i t out of England during the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Dumba s s.