I do not know why I thought Thanksgiving was a celebration related to Christians and I thought most of the world celebrate it! Maybe because it became very popular or maybe just because I have always been surrounded by American friends who celebrated it and I didn’t question what’s the original story behind it.

So first of all, it is not a religious celebration related to any religion 😛 ( I know you think I’m so dum dum now – but excuse me!! I came from Libya!! how would I knew!! at least now I do 😀 )

The real story is In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. As simple as this!

In 2017, I was lucky enough to be invited by my host family in Menlo Park to celebrate it with them and they were kind enough to let me invited three other fellows with us 🙂

And because we have big hearts and BELLIES TOO!! One Thanksgiving wasn’t enough of for us! Some of us had 3 thanksgiving parties on that day like Ahmed 😛 And in my case, I had two, the first was in Menlo Park and the second was in San Francisco with Bay Area fellows- hosted by the sweetheart Rukmani, and we called it Friendsgiving 🙂

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