Yes. An interesting tradition:
The
Pilgrims were the English settlers who came to North America on the
Mayflower and established the
Plymouth Colony in what is today
Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of
Plymouth, Devon. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of
Brownists, or Separatist
Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.
They held many of the same Puritan
Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled
Separatists. After several years living in exile in Holland, they eventually determined to establish a new settlement in the New World and arranged with investors to fund them. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620. The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)
President
Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent
Father who dwelleth in the Heavens", to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
[9] On June 28, 1870,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)
PAH