When is thanksgiving held

Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation.

Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity. Communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less fortunate. Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.

Several U. In September , a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England. The ship carried passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River.

One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth. Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship.

Interestingly, President Franklin Roosevelt had decided to move Thanksgiving from the fourth Thursday in November to the third Thursday in November back in However, this was not a very popular move. Read more about this story below. Prior to the formal establishment of Thanksgiving, harvest festivals had been celebrated for centuries by Native Americans, with colonial services dating back to the late 16th century. The autumnal feasts celebrated the harvest of crops after a season of bountiful growth.

As the story goes, it was in the early s when communities of settlers in both Massachusetts and Virginia came together to give thanks for their survival, for the fertility of their fields, and for their faith.

The most widely known early Thanksgiving is that of the Pilgrims in Plimoth, Massachusetts, who shared an autumn harvest feast with the Wampanoag Native Americans in However, there were other recorded ceremonies of thanks on these lands. In , Spanish explorers and the local Timucua tribe St.

Augustine, Florida celebrated a mass of thanksgiving. The Native Americans, too, had a rich tradition of giving thanks at harvesttime feasts long before Europeans appeared on their soil. And well after the Pilgrims, for more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving have been celebrated by individual colonies and states.

Initially, when certain men and women of Scrooby, England, were persecuted for separating themselves from the Church of England, they, as Pilgrims, fled to Leiden, Holland. Upon the execution of separatist leader James of Barneveld there on May 13, , they realized that Holland was no more free than England and prepared to go to America. On July 20, , after putting their plans into effect, they asked for the parting words of their beloved pastor, John Robinson.

The next day, they boarded the ship Speedwell , anchored where the canal from Leiden then entered the Maas or Meuse, a river flowing into the North Sea at Delftshaven, and sailed for Southampton, England. After some misadventures and more farewells, these brave souls departed on board the Mayflower on September 6, Image by Photos. The Mayflower arrived at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of a curved peninsula later named Cape Cod, on November 21 and on that day drew up one of the most significant documents of American history, the Mayflower Compact.

The Compact was a constitution formed by the people—the beginning of popular government in the world. They then explored the lands along the bay formed by the peninsula. On December 22, after holding the first town meeting in America to decide where to build their homes, the Pilgrims went onshore at a site now called Plymouth Rock.

There, on the shore above the rock, they settled. After years, their descendants and those of the Puritans are still sailing along. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was observed for a slightly different reason than celebration of the harvest—it was in honor of the creation of the new United States Constitution!

Washington was in his first term as president, and a young nation had just emerged successfully from the Revolution. While Thanksgiving became a yearly tradition in many communities—celebrated on different months and days that suited them—it was not yet a federal government holiday. Thomas Jefferson and many subsequent presidents felt that a public religious demonstration of piety was not appropriate for a government type of holiday in a country based in part on the separation of church and state.

While religious thanksgiving services continued, there were no further presidential proclamations marking Thanksgiving until the Civil War of the s. A depiction of Thanksgiving in , by Winslow Homer. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library. President Lincoln made a proclamation marking Thursday, November 26, , as Thanksgiving.

In this case, Lincoln was expressing gratitude to God and thanks to the Army for emerging successfully from the Battle of Gettysburg. In , President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the second-to-last Thursday. You could argue, however, that this helped create the shopping craze known as Black Friday. In , to end any confusion, the president and Congress established Thanksgiving as a United States federal holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, which is how it stands today!

Of course, Thanksgiving was not born of presidential proclamations. Thanksgiving Day in Canada is celebrated on the second Monday in October and has different origins than the American version of the holiday.

The first Thanksgiving meal observed in what is now Canada occurred in , when English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew held a meal to thank God for granting them safe passage through the wilds of the New World. Some Quebecois may not celebrate the holiday at all. Today, Canadians often visit with family and friends to celebrate. The Thanksgiving food traditions tend to be pretty similar to their American neighbors: turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and cranberry sauce are traditional. Add some maple syrup for a uniquely Canadian twist!

See some Maple Syrup recipes. Canadian football is on the television, and many Canadians get outside for a nice hike or ramble in the woods, since the weather has not yet taken a turn for the worse. Everyone is thankful for the harvest! Read more about the differences between Canadian and American Thanksgiving. Today's Top Stories. Makeover Takeover: Colonial Comeback. Treat Your Family to Homemade Cupcakes. What day is Thanksgiving this year?

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