Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is an annual national holiday in the United States and Canada, traditionally celebrated with a large meal to give thanks for the year's harvest and blessings.
It took a wartime president to formally establish this as a national holiday, hoping a shared day of gratitude might offer some sense of unity to a country then tearing itself apart.
The 1621 Harvest Feast
The American holiday is traditionally traced to a 1621 harvest celebration shared between Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people, an event whose popular retelling has often simplified or omitted important historical context about subsequent Indigenous displacement and conflict.
A Wartime Declaration
President Abraham Lincoln formally established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, during the height of the Civil War, intending it as a day of national unity and gratitude amid the country's deep and painful divisions.
Fixing the Date
Thanksgiving has been observed on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States since 1941, when Congress formally fixed the date after a period of some confusion following an earlier attempt by President Franklin Roosevelt to move the holiday earlier in the month.
Turkey and Tradition
Modern Thanksgiving celebrations typically center on a large family meal featuring turkey and traditional side dishes such as stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, alongside traditions including televised parades and football games.
The Start of Holiday Shopping
In more recent decades, the day following Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, has become closely associated with the traditional start of the American holiday shopping season, adding a significant commercial dimension to the originally harvest-focused holiday.
