For thousands of years, cultures all over the world have celebrated the fruits of a laborious and successful autumn harvest. While Josh and I were living in Vietnam, we learned about the importance of the Mid Autumn Festival, or Têt Trung Thu in Vietnamese culture. Held every year on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, the Vietnamese Mid Autumn Festival is not just about celebrating the rice harvest, but it also about spending time with children.
In America, we have our own mid-autumn festival—a one-day celebration and national holiday known as Thanksgiving. Originating in the autumn of 1621, the American Thanksgiving holiday first began as a bountiful meal that was shared between colonists and Native Americans. This original feast was held in order to give thanks for a successful harvest season. Today, our economy isn’t as dependent on agriculture as it was in the 1600s, and as a result, the Thanksgiving holiday isn’t as rooted in celebrating the autumn harvest as it once was. Even still, many of our Thanksgiving traditions remain firmly intact, and our annual Thanksgiving celebrations are an important part of American culture.
