Plymouth Colony Service issued a three hundred and fiftieth-year commemorative stamp recognizing the English dissenters first landing at the modern day settlement of Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1620. Each year, the United States celebrates a holiday known as Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a federal holiday and frequently involves a family gathering with a large feast, traditionally featuring a turkey. Civic recognitions of the holiday typically include parades and football games. The holiday is meant to honor the First Thanksgiving, which was a harvest feast held in Plymouth in 1621, as first recorded in the book "New England's Memorial"
History of Protestantism in the United States rapidly and started challenging the Anglicans for moral leadership. A small group of Pilgrims settled the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, seeking refuge from conflicts in England which led up to the English Civil War. The Puritans, a much larger group than the Pilgrims, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. Puritans were English Protestants who wished to reform and purify the Church of England in the New World of what they considered to be unacceptable residues of Roman Catholicism. Within two years, an additional 2,000 settlers arrived. Beginning in 1630, some 20,000 Puritans emigrated