Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving for some hundreds of years now, and it’s easy to assume we invented it. But the basic idea of giving thanks to God for a good harvest is an old idea. In the time of Jesus, all Jews celebrated three different harvest festivals every year: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Now it’s true that each of these festivals was not 100% about the harvest. These festivals commemorated other things too. But each festival included a celebration of the harvest as an essential part. Let’s look at each of these. Passover—Celebrating the Barley Harvest Passover is an …