Nov 24, 2016
Thanksgiving 2016
This Doodle’s Key Themes
On Thanksgiving, celebrated in America on the last Thursday of November, friends and families gather around tables to feast and give thanks. This holiday has origins dating back nearly 400 years when early American settlers met the Native American Wampanoag people.
It was 1620 in Plymouth, Massachusetts when Mayflower colonists and the Wampanoag forged a partnership of necessity. Decimated by an epidemic and wary of the mightier Narragansett, their nearby enemies, the Wampanoag and the newcomers become allies. The pilgrims were unfamiliar with Massachusetts’ natural resources and ill-equipped for survival - but Tisquantum, an English-speaking Patuxet Wampanoag, taught them how to hunt, gather shellfish, and plant corn, beans, and squash. Following harvest in the fall of 1621, the settlers and the Wampanoag, celebrated what’s considered the “First Thanksgiving,” a three-day feast with wild duck, goose, turkey, deer, and barley ale.
Evocative of American folk art, with quilt-like patterning and simple shapes, today’s Doodle, rendered in a rich harvest-colored palette, is an ode to this season of togetherness.
Where this Doodle appeared
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