I'm Angela O'Dell and you are listening to Real Cool History for Kids, a podcast show featuring history stories told from a biblical worldview.

Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 11 of real cool history for kids.

Today's story is a special one because we are in the month of November. And in just a couple of weeks,

we're going to be celebrating one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. That's what this

story is about, how Thanksgiving became a national holiday. You probably know the story of the first Thanksgiving.

No doubt you've heard and read stories about how the pilgrims came on the Mayflower

and risked life and limb to come and settle a colony in America where their families could worship God the way they wanted to.

Although the telling of this event has been made into legends of grand proportions, we do know that the pilgrims and the Native Americans put aside their differences for a while and had a feast of celebration for their bountiful harvest and their survival of that very rough first year of life in America.

This celebration became a tradition each fall, and many people continued to observe it throughout the colonial period of our country's history.

After the United States won its independence from Britain, after the United States won its independence from Britain after the Revolutionary War,

many people still continued the tradition of their yearly feast and celebration of thankfulness

for the provision of the bounty that God had blessed them in this wonderful land of plenty and opportunity.

But it still wasn't a national holiday yet.

Years passed and our country grew.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory, which added a huge amount of land to our country.

A few decades later, the country grew again when the southwestern part of North America was added.

That's the part where Texas and California and New Mexico, that whole area, when that was added,

we gained another huge section of land.

We have learned about this time period in other podcast episodes.

We learned how this issue of slavery was one of the main reasons for the American Civil War, and we also learned

about the terrible event surrounding the murder of President Lincoln. During this time, there was an

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