BALI, Indonesia — One aspect of globalization is that some holidays have become internationalized. That is certainly the case with Thanksgiving Day, a distinctly American feast day now celebrated throughout the world on the fourth Thursday of each November.
Many people consider Thanksgiving to be a religious holiday since the first celebration involved worshipful praise for an abundant harvest within a colony of devout Christians. In its modern manifestation, it is a day with broad secular appeal that unites all Americans of all faiths or those with none at all.
In all events, divine intervention may not have been at work on the first occasion for the first celebration of a bountiful harvest that marks this day of feasting. As it turns out, the worldly basis for the first Thanksgiving Day involved changes in the economic system that had guided activities from the founding of the Pilgrims.