Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.

Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people. The American holiday is particularly rich in legend and symbolism, and the traditional fare of the Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.





Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630sbrought their previous tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The 1621 Plymouth, Massachusetts thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. The Pilgrims celebrated this with the Wampanoags, a tribe of Native Americans who, along with the last surviving Patuxet, had helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity, in exchange for an alliance and protection against the rival Narragansett tribe.





Family Celebration

Thanksgiving Day is a day for people in the US to give thanks for what they have. Families and friends get together for a meal, which traditionally includes a roast turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, cranberry sauce, gravy, and pumpkin pie.

In some cities and towns, there are parades during the Thanksgiving weekend. In most areas, these festivities also mark the opening of the Christmas shopping season.

Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing an enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.





How Did Thanksgiving Become a Holiday?

Back in September 1789, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking former president George Washington to recommend a day of thanksgiving to the country.

This prompted Washington to issue a proclamation in October 1789, declaring November 26 as an official holiday of "sincere and humble thanks," according to the U.S. National Archives.

Later in 1863, former president Abraham Lincoln encouraged Americans to mark the last Thursday of November as "a day of Thanksgiving." In 1870, Congress passed legislation that made Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Thanksgiving Day is a public holiday. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.