In which year does Thanksgiving date back to ______.

Many of the early settlers in the new world came to America seeking religious freedom. One of the best known of these groups was the pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Massachusetts in the winter of 1620.
   In fact the American national holiday "Thanksgiving" celebrated each November dates back to the pilgrims first year when they held a feast in thanks for surviving that first brutal winter. The pilgrims came to America on hoard the May Flower.
   The story of the May Flower actually begins long before the ship set sail in 1620 more than a decade before, when members of a puritan sect that opposed the Elizabethan established church in England fled persecution in their homeland for refuge in the Netherlands. This group of about 100 pilgrims eventually settled in Lyden where their congregation tripled. But although they lacked the religious and civil autonomy they needed for their spiritual purity and growth. So in 1616 they decided to move to America where under English protection, they hoped to establish a profitable fishing and trading post in the colony of Virginia.