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"
Christianity in the United States parishioners to become devout at home, using the "Book of Common Prayer" for private prayer and devotion (rather than the Bible). The stress on personal piety opened the way for the First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church and into the unauthorized Baptist and Methodist movements. A group which later became known as the Pilgrims settled the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, seeking refuge from persecution in Europe. 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