Today Marks Thanksgiving, Know US Traditional Holiday's Story

Today marks Thanksgiving Day which is an annual holiday in the US. It celebrated the harvest and the blessings of the year.

Americans believe that Thanksgiving was celebrated for the first time in the 1612 harvest shared by the English colonists from Plymouth and Wampanoag.

The story began with a few colonists going out “fowling,” for turkeys and they “in one day killed as much as…served the company almost a week.”

The New England colonists used to regularly celebrating “Thanksgivings,” days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought. 

The tradition was adopted by the US Congress.

Thanksgiving Day did not become an official holiday until Northerners dominated the federal government. 

Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for a national Thanksgiving Day to promote unity. 

She was supported by President Abraham Lincoln. 

On October 3, 1863, during the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.

The holiday was annually proclaimed by every president thereafter, and the date was chosen to be the last Thursday in November. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation in 1942 designating the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

 

A traditional Thanksgiving dinner consists of roast turkey, turkey stuffing with onions and celery, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.