Today, Americans around the world are celebrating Thanksgiving. Many regard it as the most important holiday of the year, and even bigger than Christmas.

In Bermuda, the centrepiece will be the annual Thanksgiving service, this time at Wesley Methodist Church, when US Consul-General Gregory Slayton will head a host of dignitaries and members of the public attending.

While everyone is aware of the trappings of Thanksgiving, not everyone is familiar with its origins and customs, so Lifestyle's Nancy Acton reports.

When the Mayflower set sail for America in 1620, about two-thirds of the pilgrims were members of the English Separatist church. Persecuted in their homeland, they had gone first to Holland in search of a better life, but through disillusionment and the subsequent assistance of a London stock company, they changed course to what they hoped would really be a brave new world.

Once the ship had safely reached Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, on December 11, 1620, the Pilgrims were faced with a terrible winter. By the following autumn, 46 of the original 102 members had perished. The survivors included four women and almost 40 percent children.

The first Thanksgiving feast was held to thank the Almighty for sparing their lives, to which the local Wampanoag chief Massasoit and 90 of his tribesmen were bidden, also in gratitude, for not only helping the Pilgrims to survive but also for teaching them the necessary skills of cultivation, as a result of which their first harvest was plentiful.

More in the style of a traditional English harvest celebration than a 'thanksgiving' observance as we know it today, the celebration went on for three days, and the menu included wild ducks and geese caught by men on the orders of Governor William Bradford, as well as venison, fish, berries, dried fruit, plums, clams and fish.

Although the Pilgrims used the term 'turkey' in reference to any wild fowl, it is certain that the bird which is the centrepiece of today's Thanksgiving dinner was not on that first table.

Nor was pumpkin pie — another Thanksgiving staple of modern times. In fact, because of low supplies of flour the Pilgrims had no bread. With no domestic cattle there were no dairy products; nor were there potatoes because the Europeans of the time believed them to be poisonous. The colonists did, however, eat boiled pumpkin, so perhaps that is where the link with pumpkin pie comes from.

The first Thanksgiving was not repeated in 1622, but in 1623 Governor Bradford declared another 'day of thanksgiving', to which the Indians were again invited, after the Pilgrims' earnest prayers for an end to a severe drought brought plenty of heavy rain the following day.

It would be another 53 years before the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts met on June 20, 1676 to discuss an appropriate way to give thanks for the successful establishment of their community. Unanimously, they decided that June 29, 1676 would be a day of thanksgiving, although it is probable that the Indians were not included since the celebration would, in part, recognise the colonists' recent victory over the 'heathen natives'.

In October, 1777 all 13 colonies held a one-off thanksgiving celebration at the same time, during which the patriotic victory over the British at Saratoga was also commemorated.

By 1789, despite discord among the colonies, and a feeling that a handful of Pilgrims did not merit a national holiday, George Washington proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving anyway. Later, President Jefferson would scoff at the idea.

It took the efforts of a woman — magazine editor Josepha Hale — to pave the way for what we know as Thanksgiving today. From 1827, Ms Hale obsessively championed her cause, writing endless editorials and letters to governors and presidents alike, until finally, on October 3, 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be held on the last Thursday in November.

While successive US presidents followed suit, the date was changed a few times, sometimes to public uproar. Finally, in 1941 the US Congress sanctioned Thanksgiving as an annual, legal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November, and thus it remains.