Thanksgiving (Fourth Thursday in November)

Thanksgiving Day is an annual holiday observed in the United States to express thankfulness for food, family, friends, and home. This holiday is also celebrated in Canada on the second Monday in October. We discuss Thanksgiving in the United States.

Origins of Thanksgiving
Following a nineteenth century tradition, most Americans believe that the first American Thanksgiving was a feast that took place sometime in the autumn of 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts. In 1620, a group of Pilgrims, who were heading for Virginia, instead landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. In the autumn of 1621, they celebrated a three-day harvest feast with the native Wampanoag people, without whom they would not have survived the winter of 1620. This event was not viewed as a thanksgiving celebration at the time. The colony did not have a Thanksgiving observance until 1623, which was a religious observance rather than a feast. 

The nineteenth century reinterpretation of the 1621 festival has since become a model for the U.S. version of Thanksgiving, but it was an established tradition before the popularization of the Pilgrim mythology. Some of the details of the American Thanksgiving story are myths that developed in the 1890s and early 1900s. These myths were 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 to America.

Take a look at Wikipedia if you would like more information.

Traditional celebration
Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated with a large dinner shared among friends and family. The gathering is an important family gathering, and people often travel long distances to be with relatives for the celebration. The Thanksgiving holiday is often a four-day weekend with Thursday and Friday off. Thanksgiving is usually celebrated almost entirely at home, unlike the Fourth of July or Christmas, which are associated with a variety of shared public experiences such as fireworks and picnics for the Fourth of July and caroling and parties for Christmas. 

In New York City, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held annually every Thanksgiving Day in Midtown Manhattan. The parade has moving stands with specific themes, scenes from Broadway plays, large balloons of cartoon characters and TV personalities, and high school marching bands. To complete the parade, Santa Claus passes the reviewing stand. Thanksgiving parades also occur in many other cities such as Plymouth, Houston, Philadelphia (which claims the oldest parade), and Detroit (where it is the only major parade of the year). Within the New York metropolitan area, the city of Stamford, Connecticut holds an alternative parade to the Macy's parade (with different characters on the balloons) the Sunday before Thanksgiving that has attracted over 250,000 people in recent years. 

American football is often a major part of Thanksgiving celebrations in the U.S. Professional games are traditionally played on Thanksgiving Day. Until recently in the U.S., these were the only games played during the week apart from Sunday or Monday night. The Detroit Lions of the American National Football League have hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day since 1934, with the exception of 1939-1944 due to World War II. The Dallas Cowboys have hosted every Thanksgiving Day since 1966, with the exception of 1975 and 1977 when the then-St. Louis Cardinals hosted. Additionally, many college and high school football games are played over Thanksgiving weekend, often between regional or historic rivals.

President Roosevelt 
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be the next to last Thursday of November rather than the last. With the country still in the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt thought this would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would aid bringing the country out of the Depression. At the time, it was considered inappropriate to advertise goods for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. However, Roosevelt's declaration was not mandatory; twenty-three states went along with this recommendation, and 22 did not. Other states, like Texas, could not decide and took both weeks as government holidays. Roosevelt persisted in 1940 to celebrate his "Franksgiving," as it was termed. The U.S. Congress in 1941 split the difference and established that the Thanksgiving would occur annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes the next to last. On November 26 that year President Roosevelt signed this bill into U.S. law.

Truman

President Truman receiving a Thanksgiving turkey from members of the Poultry and Egg National Board and other representatives of the turkey industry, outside the White House.

Since 1947, or possibly earlier, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys. The live turkey is pardoned and lives out the rest of its days on a peaceful farm. While it is commonly held that this tradition began with Harry Truman in 1947, the Truman Library has been unable to find any evidence for this. Still others claim that that the tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son's pet turkey. Both stories have been quoted in more recent presidential speeches.

In more recent years, two turkeys have been pardoned, in case the original turkey becomes unavailable for presidential pardoning. Since 2003 the public has been invited to vote for the two turkeys' names. In 2005, they were named Marshmallow and Yam (who went on to live at Disneyland); 2004's turkeys were named Biscuit and Gravy; in 2003, Stars and Stripes.

Thanksgiving dinner

The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States is a large meal, starring a large roasted turkey. All of the dishes in a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner are made from foods native to North America, the Pilgrims having received these foods from the Indians. A Thanksgiving dinner is usually turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, and beverages. Many people also serve sweet potatoes. A variety of vegetables is usually served too.

Turkey
Because turkey is the most common main dish of a Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving is sometimes colloquially called Turkey Day. The USDA estimated that 269 million turkeys were raised in the country in 2003, about one-sixth of which were destined for a Thanksgiving dinner plate.

Turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, is becoming more popular, from its base in Louisiana. Deep-fried turkey is rising in popularity as well, requiring special fryers to hold the large bird, and reportedly leading to fires and bad burns.

Alternatives to Turkey
Foods other than turkey are sometimes served as the main dish for a Thanksgiving dinner. Goose and duck, foods which were traditional European centerpieces of Christmas dinners before being displaced by ham, are now ironically sometimes served in place of the Thanksgiving turkey. On the West Coast of the United States, Dungeness crab is common as an alternate main dish, as crab season starts in early November. Sometimes a variant recipe for cooking turkey could be used, for example a Chinese recipe for goose could be used on the similarly-sized American bird. Vegetarians or vegans may try tofurkey, a tofu based dish with imitation turkey flavor.

Side Dishes
Many other foods are served alongside the main dish-so many that, because of the amount of food, the Thanksgiving meal is sometimes served midday or early afternoon to make time for all the eating, and preparation may begin at the crack of dawn or days before.

Traditional Thanksgiving foods are sometimes specific to the day, and although some of the foods might be seen at any semi-formal meal in the United States, the meal often has something of a ritual or traditional quality. Many Americans would say that Thanksgiving is incomplete without cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy. Other commonly served dishes include sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans or green bean casserole, and a Waldorf salad. For dessert, various pies are served, particularly pumpkin pie, apple pie and pecan pie.

There are also regional differences as to the stuffing or dressing traditionally served with the turkey. Southerners generally make stuffing from cornbread, while in other parts of the country white bread is the base. One or several of the following may be added: oysters, apples, chestnuts, raisins, celery and/or other vegetables, sausage or turkey giblets. 

Other dishes reflect the region or cultural background of those who have come together for the meal. For example, Italian-Americans often have lasagna on the table and Ashkenazi Jews may serve noodle kugel, a sweet pudding. Irish-Americans have been known sometimes to substitute the turkey with prime rib of beef. Those of the vegetarian or vegan persuasion have been known to come up with alternative entree centerpieces such as a large vegetable pie or a stuffed and baked pumpkin.

Nicknames
In certain parts of the United States, the name for Thanksgiving can be shortened or changed. These nicknames include:

Turkey Day (after the traditional Thanksgiving dinner)
T-Day (abbreviation of either Thanksgiving or Turkey)
Macy's Day (exclusive to New York City, a reference to the parade, above, as in Macy's Day Parade instead of the proper Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade)

We hope you enjoyed this page about Thanksgiving. If you are interested in more information, there is certainly more. Enjoy the adventure of finding it!

This page is based on a page from Wikipedia titled Thanksgiving. You can find the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving. Wikipedia is open source. That means anyone is free to use it and alter it as long as they credit the source. Wikipedia is not copyright; it is leftright. The Thanksgiving Day related text on this page is also leftright. You are free to use it as you like as long as you credit both Aaron Teaches and Wikipedia for our authorship. This means that if you want to use this, you must include a statement crediting us and provide links to Aaron Teaches and Wikipedia.