Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the US.
So let’s find out some more trivia and facts about this day.
- Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, some of the Caribbean islands, and Liberia
- It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year
- Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan
- Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States, and around the same part of the year in other places
- Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular holiday as well
- Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among almost all religions after harvests and at other times
- The Thanksgiving holiday’s history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation
- It also has aspects of a harvest festival
- Even though the harvest in New England occurs well before the late-November date on which the modern Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated
- In the English tradition, days of thanksgiving and special thanksgiving religious services became important during the English Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII and in reaction to the large number of religious holidays on the Catholic calendar
- Before 1536 there were 95 Church holidays, plus 52 Sundays, when people were required to attend church and forego work and sometimes pay for expensive celebrations
- The 1536 reforms reduced the number of Church holidays to 27, but some Puritans wished to completely eliminate all Church holidays, including Christmas and Easter
- The holidays were to be replaced by specially called Days of Fasting or Days of Thanksgiving, in response to events that the Puritans viewed as acts of special providence
- Unexpected disasters or threats of judgement from on high called for Days of Fasting
- Special blessings, viewed as coming from God, called for Days of Thanksgiving
- For example, Days of Fasting were called on account of drought in 1611, floods in 1613, and plagues in 1604 and 1622
- Days of Thanksgiving were called following the victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 and following the deliverance of Queen Anne in 1705
- An unusual annual Day of Thanksgiving began in 1606 following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605
- And developed into Guy Fawkes Day on November 5
- Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England
- The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia
- It is a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts
- The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group’s charter from the London Company
- The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity
- Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the “First Thanksgiving”
- Including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631
- According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden
- Now called Oktober Feest, Leiden’s autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims’ plans to emigrate to America
- Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony’s thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623
- The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s
- Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682
- And then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution
- During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations
- Various proclamations were made by royal governors, John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress
- Each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes
- As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789
- Thanksgiving, currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941
- It has been an annual tradition in the United States by presidential proclamation since 1863
- And by state legislation since the Founding Fathers of the United States
- Historically, Thanksgiving has traditionally been a celebration of the blessings of the year, including the harvest
- What Americans call the “Holiday Season” generally begins with Thanksgiving
- Thanksgiving is celebrated both with family
- And in public places with parades such as Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City, ABC Dunkin’ Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia, America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade in Plymouth, Massachusetts, McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago, and Bayou Classic Thanksgiving Parade in New Orleans
- This first day after Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, marks the start of the Christmas shopping season
- The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States and in Canada is a large meal, generally centered on a large roasted turkey
- It is served with a variety of side dishes which vary from traditional dishes
- Such as mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, to ones that reflect regional or cultural heritage
- The majority of the dishes in the traditional American version of Thanksgiving dinner are made from foods native to the New World
As according to tradition the Pilgrims received these foods, or learned how to grow them, from the Native Americans - Thanksgiving dinner is the largest eating event in the United States
- People eat more on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year
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