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Thanksgiving Day

When is Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November. In the US, offices, businesses and schools remain closed on Thanksgiving Day - with many extending holiday on the Friday after, too, making it a four-day weekend.

What to make for a classic Thanksgiving Dinner?

The traditional Thanksgiving meal revolves around turkey, to the point where Thanksgiving is sometimes colloquially called Turkey Day. Most Thanksgiving turkeys are stuffed with a mix of bread cubes, chopped celery, carrots, onions and sage for roasting.

The turkey is usually served with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy. Yams or sweet potatoes are another important part of Thanksgiving dinner and is often served as a side-dish. Pumpkin pie is the most popular dessert of Thanksgiving.

How is the day celebrated?

Many big cities hold a Thanksgiving Day parade, the most famous of which is the Macy's parade in New York City – an annual pageant of floats, cheerleaders, marching bands and gigantic helium balloons in the shape of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat.

Football (the American version) plays a major role in Thanksgiving. Playing and watching American football is a long held Thanksgiving tradition. The National Football League has played over the Thanksgiving weekend practically since the game's invention, and it's one of the biggest days in the football calendar.

Family members usually come together, give thanks and participate in the Thanksgiving dinner. Many also schedule a weekend vacation to get away from the chaos in the cities and enjoy a nice break.

What's the history of Thanksgiving?

The celebration of Thanksgiving is primarily a feast to give thanks for the fruits of the previous harvest. Thanksgiving Day can be traced back to the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Dutch settlers of the Plymouth Colony known popularly as the Pilgrims invited the local Native Americans to a harvest feast after a particularly successful growing season. This feast lasted three days, and was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. It spread through the country and was celebrated on different days in different communities until, in 1789, George Washington declared the first national Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. It is a holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. The American Thanksgiving began as a feast of thanksgiving almost four hundred years ago.

In 1620, a religious Puritan community sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. They settled in what is now known as the state of Massachusetts.

Their first winter in America was difficult. They arrived too late to grow a rich harvest. Moreover, half the colony died from disease. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn. Indians showed them also how to grow other crops and how to hunt and fish.

In the autumn of 1621 they got a beautiful harvest of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so they planned a feast. Local Indian chief and ninety Indians were present. The colonists learned from Indians how to cook cranberries and dishes of corn and pumpkins.

In following years many of the colonists celebrated the harvest with a feast of thanks. After the United States gained independence, Congress recommended one yearly day of thanksgiving for the whole country.

Later, George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Then, after the Civil war, Abraham Lincoln suggested the last Thursday in November to be the day of thanksgiving.

Black Friday

Friday after Thanksgiving kickstarts the Christmas shopping season with promotional sales.

The day after Thanksgiving was called "Black Friday" in a 1951 journal referring to workers calling in sick in order to have a four-day Thanksgiving weekend.

Thanksgiving Celebration

Thanksgiving is a great time to be thankful and appreciate who you have and what you have. It is a time for families to meet, socialize and enjoy each other's company, sometimes the only opportunity in a year. Some prefer it to Christmas because of less emphasis on consumerism. Thanksgiving, for most, is also a start of a four day weekend which is great, too.

Interesting facts about Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving predates American Thanksgiving by 43 years. The first Thanksgiving in North America was held in 1578 in what is now Newfoundland, Canada. It was 43 before the first American Thanksgiving which happened in 1621 at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in Massachusetts [1].

Sarah Joseph Hale, who is the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" had contributed to the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. After 17 years of sending letters to President Lincoln, she had convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863. Before Thanksgiving, the only national holidays celebrated in the United States were Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day) and Independence Day.

The TV dinner was invented in 1953 when Swanson had 260 tons of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving and no idea what to do with it. When asked, one of the employees said that they should package it in trays with sides and freeze.

There is a grocery in Paris named "Thanksgiving" that sells US food like Skippy peanut butter, Jello Instant Pudding, and Pop-Tarts to homesick ex-pats.

The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for plumbers and septic companies who call it "Brown Friday".

NASA engineers responsible for the Voyager program calculated trajectories for around 10,000 launch windows, from which they selected about 100 that met the mission objectives while minimizing planetary encounters taking place over the Thanksgiving or Christmas, allowing them to spend the holidays at home.

In 2013, Tony Rohr who was a manager at Pizza Hut franchise in Elkhart, Indiana, was fired for refusing to open on Thanksgiving Day so that his employees could spend the holiday with their families. He was offered the job back.