geesh, you're nuts. The celebration. The celebration and observation:
Thanksgiving (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I thought wiki was beneath you.
how about the history channel?
Thanksgiving Facts Video ? History.com
The History Channel does some good stuff, but I put more faith in the Smithsonian Institution when it comes to American History.
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmah/thanks.htm
The first Thanksgiving in North America was in New Foundland in 1578. “In the same year, Jamestown colonists gave thanks for their safe arrival, and another service was held in 1610 when a supply ship arrived after a harsh winter… Thus British colonists held several Thanksgiving services in America before the Pilgrim's celebration in 1621.”
“The Pilgrims, with a puritanical rejection of public religious display, held a non-religious Thanksgiving feast, aside from saying grace. In fact, they seem to have used the three days for feasting, playing games, and even drinking liquor.”
“In 1623, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts, held another day of Thanksgiving…
This 1623 festival appears to have been the origin of our Thanksgiving Day because it combined a religious and social celebration”
“Festivals of Thanksgiving were observed sporadically on a local level for more than 150 years. They tended to be autumn harvest celebrations. But in 1789, Elias Boudinot, Massachusetts, member of the House of Representatives, moved that a day of Thanksgiving be held to thank God for giving the American people the opportunity to create a Constitution to preserve their hard won freedoms. A Congressional Joint Committee approved the motion, and informed President George Washington. On October 3, 1789, the President proclaimed that the people of the United States observe "a day of public thanksgiving and prayer" on Thursday, the 26th of November.”
“The next three Presidents proclaimed, at most, two days of thanksgiving sometime during their terms of office, either on their own initiative or at the request of a joint Resolution of Congress. One exception was Thomas Jefferson, who believed it was a conflict of church and state to require the American people hold a day of prayer and thanksgiving. President James Madison proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving to be held on April 13, 1815, the last such proclamation issued by a President until Abraham Lincoln did so in 1862.”
Thanksgiving was not created by Lincoln to heal the country after the Civil War. The first Thanksgiving was, indeed, something the Pilgrams did in 1622/3. George Washington made is a formal day for the whole country in 1789. Lincoln was the 5th President to proclaim it a national holiday, which he did in 1862, 3 years before the end of the civil war, so it wasn't to heal the country after the war.
Freedom for every American to be thankful in their own way? 
