We Wish You a Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a Federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The holiday is sometimes called American Thanksgiving (outside the United States). This is to distinguish it from the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday and similar celebrations in other regions.
Because Thanksgiving is a Federal holiday, United States government offices are closed. All employees are paid for that day. It is also a holiday for the New York Stock Exchange and most other financial markets and companies.
The centerpiece of Thanksgiving celebrations remains Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner traditionally consists of foods that are native to the Americas. Those foods are namely turkey, potatoes (usually mashed), stuffing, squash, corn (maize), green beans, cranberries (typically in sauce form), and pumpkin pie. In addition to dinner, there are other Thanksgiving customs. They include charitable organizations offering Thanksgiving dinner for the poor, attending religious services and watching parades. It is also a day full of football games. In American culture, Thanksgiving is seen as the beginning of the fall and winter holiday season. That season naturally includes Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Learn about the History
of Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving started as a harvest festival. The New England colonists were already used to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings.” Those were days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as a military victory or the end of a drought. The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the Pilgrims. It was after their first harvest in the New World in October, 1621. The feast lasted three days and was attended by 90 Wampanoag and 53 Pilgrims. This is according to Edward Winslow, who was at the feast.
Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789. It was first celebrated with a proclamation by President George Washington. It was requested by Congress. President Thomas Jefferson chose not to observe the holiday. Its celebration was intermittent until 1863. That’s when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” He directed that it be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
On June 28, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Holidays Act. It that made Thanksgiving a yearly Federal holiday in Washington D.C. On January 6, 1885, an Act by Congress made Thanksgiving and other Federal holidays paid holidays for all Federal workers in the United States. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the date was moved to one week earlier. This was observed between 1939 and 1941. There was much controversy over this change. From 1942 to now, Thanksgiving received a permanent date. It was, and still is, the fourth Thursday in November. This was done by an Act of Congress signed into law by FDR.
Different Ways of Celebrating
Thanksgiving Day
The poor are often provided with food at Thanksgiving time. Most communities have annual food drives that collect non-perishable packaged and canned foods. Corporations sponsor charitable distributions of staple foods and Thanksgiving dinners. The Salvation Army enlists volunteers to serve Thanksgiving dinners to hundreds of people in different locales.
The centerpiece of most Thanksgiving celebrations is the Thanksgiving dinner. It was estimated that on Thanksgiving Day in 2019, about 40 million turkeys were consumed. It is believed that 85 percent of Americans partake in the Thanksgiving meal. That means an estimated 276 million Americans dine on the festive poultry. Spending on turkeys for Thanksgiving in 2016 was estimated to be $1.05 billion.
Nathaniel Philbrick suggested in his book, Mayflower, that the Pilgrims might already have been familiar with turkey in England. This is even though the bird is native to the Americas. The Spaniards had brought domesticated turkeys back from Central America in the early 17th century. The birds soon became popular all over Europe, including England. Turkey, as an alternative to the traditional goose, became a “fixture at English Christmas” celebration. The Pilgrims did not observe Christmas, because they could find no evidence in the scriptures as to when such a holiday should be celebrated. They felt its December scheduling was a spurious Roman Catholic invention.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held annually in New York City every Thanksgiving Day starting in 1924. It runs from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. The parade is televised nationally by NBC. It features parade floats with specific themes, performances from Broadway musicals, large balloons of cartoon characters, TV personalities, and high school marching bands. The float that traditionally ends the Parade is the Santa Claus float. The arrival of that float is an unofficial sign of the beginning of the Christmas season. It is billed as the world’s largest parade.
The oldest Thanksgiving Day parade, though, is Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It began in 1920. That parade was long associated with Gimbels, a prominent Macy’s rival, until that store closed in 1986.
American football is an important part of many Thanksgiving celebrations in the United States. This is a tradition that dates to the earliest era of the sport in the late 19th century. Professional football games are often held on Thanksgiving Day. Until recently, these were the only games played during the week apart from Sunday or Monday night. The National Football League has played games on Thanksgiving every year since its creation except during World War II. The Detroit Lions hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day from 1934 to 1938 and again every year since 1945. In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys adopted the practice of hosting Thanksgiving games. The league added a third prime time game in 2006. At first, it aired on the NFL Network, but then moved to NBC in 2012. The third game has no set site or team. It provides an opportunity for all teams in the league to host a Thanksgiving game in the future.
