An All-American Thanksgiving
Maryland Heights resident Sohail Alvi, who immigrated from Pakistan, discusses why Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday.
While the civil war raged in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln created a national secular holiday for Americans of all backgrounds, races and religions. It was called Thanksgiving. Most people's Thanksgiving narrative goes back to the Plymouth Colony, where indigenous people offered food and comfort to starving European settlers. Roughly two hundred years separate our national holidays' founding and the meal between Mayflower sailors and Native Americans. But in every tradition, a meal of thankfulness focused on uniquely American foods. Sohail Alvi, an information techonology systems analyst from Maryland Heights, has been an American citizen since emigrating from Pakistan 1995. He is a man who loves turkey day. "At the core, we are all the …
