"Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607; the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, held a thanksgiving in 1610. On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers celebrated a thanksgiving immediately upon landing at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia. The group's London Company charter specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God". This celebration has, since the mid 20th century, been commemorated there annually at present-day Berkeley Plantation, the ancestral home of the Harrison family of Virginia." -- Wikipedia
Still, I find it rather amusing that it wasn't even until the late nineteenth century that the holiday was made official by an act of Congress, a body which has never been known to get much of anything done in a hurry. :-)
So why the photo above? Well, whenever I think about Thanksgiving, I frequently think of how formidable these shores must have appeared to those folks who landed here for the first time from a more settled existence abroad--deep, seemingly impenetrable forests filled with all manner of as yet unimaginable dangers. No wonder, then, why some of them might have felt a deep sense of relief, not to mention thanksgiving, to have survived even a year upon leaving their homeland.
