What is Thanksgiving
Day?
Thanksgiving Day is a day set aside each year
where people in the United States and Canada give thanks to God for all the
blessings they received during the year by feasting and prayer.
History of
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day first started in New England.
It was for thanking God for the abundant harvest of crops. This is usually
somewhere in late fall when the crops have been harvested. People from many
parts of the world have been holding some kind of harvest festivals for
thousands of years.
How did Thanksgiving
Day became a holiday?
During the 1800s, a famous editor of the
Ladies' Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale
(author of "Mary had a little lamb") worked many years to promote the
idea of a National Thanksgiving Day. She was credited for persuading President
Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln
proclaimed the last Thursday in November 1863 as "A day of thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father." However, in 1939, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt changed it to one week earlier. This was to help businesses by
lengthening the shopping period before Christmas. There was an uproar and it
was changed back to its original date two years later. Then, Congress changed
it again after 1941 to the fourth Thursday of November and it would be a legal
federal holiday.
Read Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving
Proclamation, 1863
Today, Thanksgiving Day is usually a family
reunion dinner celebration. Roast turkey is a favorite dish on this day. The
Christians also attend church services and pray, thanking God for all the
blessings for the year.
Thanksgiving Dinner
Traditional thanksgiving dinners those days
usually includes turkeys’ cranberries, fish, dried fruit, clams, venison, plums
and lobsters. Modern times thanksgiving dinners include the pumpkin pie.
To find out more about Thanksgiving dinners,
check out the sites below.
