Welcome to a special Thanksgiving bonus episode of the Daily Cycle Podcast, I'm Virginia

Allen.

We have all heard lots of stories about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, but the

true religious roots of the holiday are often overlooked.

Here with us to talk about the history of Thanksgiving and how freedom and a spirit

of Thanksgiving work in tandem together is Hillsdale College Associate Professor of Politics,

Dr. Adam Carrington.

Professor, thank you so much for being with us today and happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, I am thankful to be on.

Well, let's go all the way back to the beginning and talk a little bit just for a moment

about the pilgrims and that first Thanksgiving in November of 1621.

What were the pilgrims celebrating?

They were celebrating their first successful harvest, so they had arrived the previous

winter on Plymouth Rock, which they had named that, and had had a very harsh winter.

It's not a good idea to land in New England with no houses and no crops in the dead of

winter, and they had actually nearly half of the people who had landed, I think there

were 104 originally, about half had actually even passed due to sickness, due to malnourishment,

due to other things, and with the help of some of the local Native Americans, they had

been able to plant a crop, they had been able to successfully harvest it that following

fall, and so Governor William Bradford, the governor of the colony had called for a feast

to celebrate that they were starting to get on their own feet, and in particularly

that they believed that God had provided for them the means to continue and to survive

...