Resources
Thanksgiving 2021 Booklet
No American holiday is more universally honored or the cause for as much goodwill and family togetherness as Thanksgiving Day. Today it is celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday of November, but the American tradition of a special day of thanksgiving has as its foundation the Pilgrim harvest festivities of 1621. This year, 2021, marks the 400th anniversary of that celebration. Over the centuries millions of Americans have followed the example of the Pilgrims, with the result that Thanksgiving Day has become the great American tradition of American families stopping from work to celebrate and give thanks for the mercy and goodness of God.
For the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim thanksgiving celebration of 1621, we offer this booklet of gratitude. It is a celebration of that first day of thanksgiving, and of the streams of blessing which flowed from Plymouth to our nation and the world. Within its pages you will find American traditions including psalms, hymns, poetry, parades and recipes. Importantly, this commemorative booklet provides chronological recollections on the faith of our 1621 fathers and mothers. Bring “Thanksgiving 400: A Grateful Nation” to your own celebration. Read it aloud, sharing the stories and many primary source documents. Our booklet chronologically offers insights into that legacy of vision, evangelism, civil and religious liberty, and national gratitude. A great mantle was placed on this nation with the declaration of the Pilgrim Fathers that they would be a covenantal people of faith committed to generational faithfulness and missionary zeal. A Thanksgiving Day worthy of remembrance rests on this foundation.
Your donation helps support the work of the Leyden Preservation Group. Together we can preserve our heritage and historic landmarks. Download your beautiful 64-page booklet.
The Enduring Legacy of the Mayflower Compact
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of America’s great covenant to liberty, the Leyden Preservation Group has created a beautiful, illustrated booklet that tells the story of The Mayflower Compact from its early history, to his legacy in law and government. This is the perfect read-aloud document for you and your family. Download “The Enduring Legacy of the Mayflower Compact” for your gift of any amount towards the ongoing work of preservation of Lot #1, one of America’s most significant landmarks of liberty.
Today, the Leyden Preservation group stewards Plot #1, home of the first recorded act of popular self-government springing from the Mayflower Compact. On Lot #1 the Pilgrims established the first common house, and in February of 1621, participated in the first recorded election in America with the selection of Miles Standish to serve as military commander of the colony.
Thanksgiving 2020 Booklet
Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. - William Bradford
There is a crisis of grumbling and unhappiness in the world, but the Pilgrim example of gratitude is one of the best antidotes. This year make your Thanksgiving dinner table a place of special gratitude and celebration with our free downloadable brochure: “A Time for Thankfulness: Thanksgiving 2020.”
From the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of President George Washington to the original thanksgiving account of the Pilgrim fathers, to savory traditional recipes, this document is chock-full-of the most important elements to make your celebration come alive. Make sure to pass this around to your children and let them share a quote, or read a short account from the words of the Pilgrims themselves. You can even share stories from the mouth of Pilgrim leader William Bradford as he explains the heroic journeys from England to Holland and ultimately to Plymouth Harbor where this undaunted community would lay the foundations for the United States of America. An antidote to revisionist history, and an incentive to cultivating a season of gratitude, A Time for Thankfulness: Thanksgiving 2020 is available for immediate download and is the perfect companion for your Thanksgiving dinner table.
Reclaiming the Pilgrim History Using Primary Source Material
2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Pilgrim's arrival in Plymouth. Past generations have dedicated two years to the centennial celebration and study of the Pilgrim story. The enthusiasms and gratitude generated by these historical studies produced epic celebrations, famous orations, poetry, parades and the laying of monuments. Notably, they resulted in generations of schoolchildren studying the Pilgrim influence on America’s legacy of life and liberty under God.
It was not uncommon for elementary school children to recite with ease the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims beginning with their origins in Scrooby, England, through their persecution and relocation to Holland, to the voyage of the Mayflower, to the historic signing of the Mayflower Compact, their arrival in Plymouth, their struggles through the first long winter, and the establishment of the colony.
For the 400th anniversary celebration, the Pilgrim story has been subject to hostile revisionism within the mainstream media. Much of the new material, including those produced by the government-sponsored 1619 Project, posits an interpretation of Pilgrim history as the story of theft, genocide, and intolerance. The primary source materials reveal a very different reality. The result of this wave of anti-Pilgrim revisionism is that a generation of children have been taught to look with contempt on the Pilgrims and to regard even the celebration of Thanksgiving Day, as an homage to colonialism and bigotry…