The History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in North America, generally observed as an expression of gratitude. The most common view of its origin is that it was to give thanks to God for the bounty of the autumn harvest. In the United States, the holiday is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada, where the harvest generally ends earlier in the year, the holiday is celebrated on the second Monday in October, which is observed as Columbus Day in the United States.

Traditional Celebration

Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated with a feast shared amongst family and friends. In the United States, it is an important family holiday, and people often travel across the country to be with family members for the holiday. The Thanksgiving holiday is generally a "four-day" weekend in the United States, in which Americans are given the relevant Thursday and Friday off. Thanksgiving is almost entirely celebrated at home, unlike the Fourth of July or Christmas, which are associated with a variety of shared public experiences (fireworks, caroling, etc.) In Canada Thanksgiving is only a three day holiday and the holiday is not as important as in the US. Because of the shortened break there is far less travel on the Canadian Thanksgiving and it is far harder for families to come together. In part because of this, Christmas is far more family oriented in Canada than it is in the United States.

Since at least the 1930s, the Christmas shopping season technically begins when Thanksgiving ends. In New York City, the Macy's (department store) Thanksgiving Day Parade is held annually every Thanksgiving Day in Midtown Manhattan. The parade features moving stands with specific themes, scenes from Broadway plays, large balloons of cartoon characters and TV personalities, and high school marching bands. It always ends with the image of Santa Claus passing the reviewing stand. While the second-biggest day of shopping of the year in the U.S. is still the Black Friday after Thanksgiving (the biggest is now the Saturday before Christmas), most shops start to stock for and promote the holidays immediately after Halloween, and sometimes even before.

U.S. tradition associates the holiday with a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Some of the details of the American Thanksgiving story are myths that developed in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of the effort to forge a common national identity in the aftermath of the Civil War and in the melting pot of new immigrants.

History of Thanksgiving in North America (Part 2)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Thanksgiving".