The holiday we celebrate as Thanksgiving is a harvest feast. All over the world, throughout history, people have celebrated the end of the hard work of harvest by feasting on the fruits of their labor. Our tradition is to commemmorate the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, but before that, Spanish settlers had celebrated a Thanksgiving in 1565, in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida. For thousands of years earlier, the people who were here before either group of settlers arrived had been holding similar feasts to celebrate the harvest. One such celebration was the Green Corn Ceremony, or Busk, celebrated by Oklahoma's Muskogee tribe. Read more in this lesson: Thanksgiving: Celebrating the Harvest.

Thanksgiving Magic

by Rowena Bastin Bennett

Thanksgiving Day I like to see
Our cook perform her witchery.
She turns a pumpkin into pie
As easily as you or I
Can wave a hand or wink an eye.
She takes leftover bread and muffin
And changes them to turkey stuffin’.
She changes cranberries to sauce
And meats to stews and stews to broths;
And when she mixes gingerbread
It turns into a man instead
With frosting collar ’round his throat
And raisin buttons down his coat.
Oh, some like magic made by wands,
And some read magic out of books,
And some like fairy spells and charms
But I like magic made by cooks!

Discussion questions, activities and P.A.S.S. for this poem

OAITC Thanksgiving lesson online: Make Mine Turkey

Where Does Turkey Dinner Come From?