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History of Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving originated as a harvest festival celebrated by Pilgrims and Wampanoag people in 1621. It has roots in religious days of fasting and thanksgiving for blessings like harvests. Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863 when President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving. Later it was established as a federal holiday occurring annually on the fourth Thursday of November. The traditional Thanksgiving dinner features foods native to the Americas like turkey, potatoes, squash and pumpkin pie.

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33 views1 page

History of Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving originated as a harvest festival celebrated by Pilgrims and Wampanoag people in 1621. It has roots in religious days of fasting and thanksgiving for blessings like harvests. Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863 when President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving. Later it was established as a federal holiday occurring annually on the fourth Thursday of November. The traditional Thanksgiving dinner features foods native to the Americas like turkey, potatoes, squash and pumpkin pie.

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Johannah Daro
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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History of Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving is a federal holiday in the United States, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of
November. It is sometimes called American Thanksgiving (outside the United States) to
distinguish it from the Canadian holiday of the same name and related celebrations in other
regions. It originated as a day of thanksgiving and harvest festival, with the theme of the
holiday revolving around giving thanks and the centerpiece of Thanksgiving celebrations
remaining a Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner traditionally consists of foods and dishes
indigenous to the Americas,
namely turkey, potatoes (usually mashed or sweet), stuffing, squash, corn (maize), green
beans, cranberries (typically in sauce form), and pumpkin pie. Other Thanksgiving customs
include charitable organizations offering Thanksgiving dinner for the poor, attending religious
services, watching parades, and viewing football games.] In American culture Thanksgiving is
regarded as the beginning of the fall–winter holiday season, which includes Christmas and
the New Year.
New England and Virginia colonists originally celebrated days of fasting, as well as days of
thanksgiving, thanking God for blessings such as harvests, ship landings, military victories, or
the end of a drought.  These were observed through church services, accompanied with feasts
and other communal gatherings. The event that Americans commonly call the "First
Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in
October 1621. This feast lasted three days and was attended by 90 Wampanoag Native
American peopleand 53 Pilgrims (survivors of the Mayflower).  Less widely known is an earlier
Thanksgiving celebration in Virginia in 1619 by English settlers who had just landed at Berkeley
Hundred aboard the ship Margaret.
Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789, with a proclamation by
President George Washington after a request by Congress.  President Thomas Jefferson chose
not to observe the holiday, and its celebration was intermittent until President Abraham
Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens", calling on the American people to also, "with
humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience fervently implore the
interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation...". Lincoln declared it for
the last Thursday in November. On June 28, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law
the Holidays Act that made Thanksgiving a yearly appointed federal holiday in Washington
D.C. On January 6, 1885, an act by Congress made Thanksgiving, and other federal holidays, a
paid holiday for all federal workers throughout the United States. [15] Under President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the date was moved to one week earlier, observed between 1939 and 1941 amid
significant controversy. From 1942 onwards, Thanksgiving, by an act of Congress, signed into
law by FDR, received a permanent observation date, the fourth Thursday in November, no
longer at the discretion of the President.

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