By: Jaime Rafferty
According to history, Thanksgiving began as a three-day feast by the Pilgrims to thank God for helping them make it to the new world safely.
Why do we, personally celebrate Thanksgiving? I know why, do you? It just seemed natural to ask some of Owensboro’s finest kids to tell us what they know about the thankful holiday.
So with a little help from the students at Burns Elementary School, we bring you their perspective. The spelling has been corrected and names replaced with initials to protect the innocent. However, the word turkey saw many unique spellings from the students such as, tirky, terkey, twerky, teerky, tarkay, torke.
What do you know about the Thanksgiving story?
Here are a few insights from our kindergarten friends:
Because I love my moma. (MF)
We have ham to eat. (JMH)
It’s somebody’s birthday. (SG)
It’s a party. (LH)
Your family can come see you because it’s a happy spirit day. (ZJ)
It’s for your parents. (MH)
I don’t know. (CS)
Because It’s Thanksgiving. (EJ)
For the candy. (ED)
To ride on an airplane. (PW)
I love my Grandma, (AM)
To thank the people for turkey (CK)
For Jesus (GT)
Let’s see what our first and second graders had to say. But this time we will share the phrase just as the students shared them. We are thankful for their cute responses.
Because you get to “spin” time with your family (LM)
“Peple” get turkeys for “peple”. (JW)
We eat turkey with mashed “tatos”. (CE)
Because it’s fun. Don’t you know its fun. Just it’s just fun. (AS)
Well I know that there are turkeys. (MC)
Because you can eat a lot and it’s a “haladay”. (ID)
It’s all about the turkey. (BL)
Because “Jeasas” and God wants us to. (KT)
That “theers chicking” and giving from other “pepol” and you get “presints”. (AR)
Because that is a “holudae” and I love that “holudae”! (LJ)
It is good and you can eat meat and you can eat “vegals” and you have have cookies and play fun games (AM)
If I had to pick a favorite quote I would say it would have to be JB. I don’t think I could have said it any better myself:
We see leaves falling from the trees then we celebrate thanksgiving for the stuff we have.
May you not take yourself so seriously this Thanksgiving holiday. Take time to share with your kids the Thanksgiving story. Perhaps you can talk about giving thanks for our many blessings and freedoms as Americans, but like JB don’t forget the other “stuff” we have to be thankful for.