Celebrations of thanks date back to 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida with a group of Spanish Explorers celebrating the safe passage across the ocean. In 1621, the first ‘well known’ celebration of thanks took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with the Pilgrims celebrating a harvest of abundance. The pilgrims did not celebrate every year, only on the years that the harvest produced above and beyond.

It was not until the Revolutionary War that George Washington declared that a day of thanks, November 26th, to be a State celebrated holiday. After much persuasion from Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, in 1863 Abraham Lincoln declared that the American people gather together “with one heart and one voice” to observe a special day of thanksgiving, and so began the National Holiday of Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow we celebrate in a tradition, a tradition of gathering with our family and friends to flip through our mental notebooks and recognize and appreciate all of the many things that bless us in our lives each day. We at CENTURY 21 Alliance Realty want to take this time, “with one heart and one voice”, to wish you and yours many reasons to be thankful not only on Thanksgiving Day, but every day!