Hundreds of Americans, people of other nationalities, and representatives of different religions gathered at Leiden’s city centre Pieterskerk on Thursday for the annual ecumenical service on Thanksgiving Day.

Overseas Americans Remember, which hosts events for stateside holidays, has organised the annual service for “many, many years”, and it has become perhaps the best known of the public Thanksgiving events in the Netherlands.

“Thanksgiving is a time for reflection,” Leiden’s new mayor Peter Heijkoop told his audience. “It is a moment to pause and appreciate all that we hold dear. Yet I can recognise how challenging it can be to express gratitude in a world where suffering, conflict, and uncertainty touch so many lives.”

Leiden’s ties to Thanksgiving and the American Pilgrims are long-standing, dating back to the 16th century. The Pilgrims once called the city home before many of them set sail for the New World in 1620.

• How the Netherlands played a key role in an American holiday

Several remained behind and gradually integrated into Dutch society. Leiden currently has several monuments dedicated to the Pilgrims, among them informational displays at the Pieterskerk and a statue that honours their departure point.

However, the city is poised to lose one of its Pilgrim connections. Next month, the American Pilgrim Museum is closing its doors in the Beschuitsteeg, where it has been located since 1997 in one of Leiden’s oldest buildings.

Thanksgiving has also become increasingly controversial in recent years due to its connection to the bleak treatment of Native Americans by European settlers over the centuries and some indigenous groups now consider it a National Day of Mourning. Nevertheless, many Americans still celebrate the holiday, which is traditionally the first day of a four-day weekend. For many, it remains a cherished annual tradition.

As the US faces another four years with Donald Trump in the White House and as military conflicts rage across Eastern Europe and beyond, the service was a moment for those in attendance to pause and reflect on the positive things in their own lives and elsewhere.

Several speeches didn’t shy away from politics, including one by Rabbi Marianne van Praag from the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in The Hague, who mentioned efforts by community groups to help repair relationships in Amsterdam following recent football-related violence and attacks on Israeli football fans.

Peacemakers

Father Sjaak de Boer from the Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour in The Hague also called for tolerance in the wake of these troubling events and thanked those striving toward peace.

“The bridge builders and connectors, the people who reach out beyond their own wall and their own truth, this year I bless them, the peacemakers, and those who comfort,” he said.

“The embassy was honoured to once again take part in this service organised by Overseas Americans Remember,” embassy spokesman Jean-Paul Horsch told Dutch News.

“We commend OAR for arranging this service annually to commemorate a beloved American holiday and celebrate the historical ties that bind the United States and the Netherlands, going back centuries to the Pilgrims and before. Our shared values of democracy and freedom were evident then and continue to this day.”