It is known that Thanksgiving is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Outside the United States, it is sometimes called American Thanksgiving to distinguish it from the Canadian holiday of the same name and related celebrations in other regions.
The dinner
often consists of foods associated with New England harvest celebrations:
turkey, potatoes (usually mashed and sweet), squash, corn (maize), green beans,
cranberries (typically as cranberry sauce), and pumpkin pie, but has expanded
over the years to include specialties from other regions of the United States,
such as pecan pie (the American South) and wild rice stuffing (the Great Lakes
region) as well as international and ethnic dishes.
In 1621, the
Plymouth colonists from England and the Native American Wampanoag people shared
an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged as one of the first Thanksgiving
celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving
were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the
midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national
Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.
Let's go all
the way back to 1863 when Abraham Lincoln was president and Thanksgiving was
proclaimed to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November nationwide.
President Lincoln was urged by Sarah Josepha Hale, who received a diary from
Plymouth, Massachusetts, governor William Bradford after it was passed down
through the generations. This diary outlined the dinner that celebrated the
abundant harvest of 1621 and included Plymouth pilgrims and Wampanoag natives,
and thus started Hale's work toward getting the holiday recognized nationally.
In 1865, a
couple years after Lincoln's proclamation (which he announced as an attempt to
unite the country during the Civil War), President Andrew Johnson announced the
first Thursday of the month as the official Thanksgiving Day. Then, in 1869,
President Ulysses S. Grant declared the third Thursday in November as the
holiday.
Read more: The reasons why we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14
In all of
those intermediary years, the holiday was celebrated on the last Thursday of
November as President Lincoln had said. It wasn't until 1939, under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the fourth Thursday in November would be henceforth
known as Thanksgiving Day. This decision was made following pressure from National
Retail Dry Goods Association, as they wanted the holiday shopping season to be
a little bit longer so customers would have more time to make purchases. And
there were five Thursdays in November 1939.
This
proclamation in 1939 initially only referred to those in Washington, D.C. and
federal employees. Although governors typically follow the president's
proclamations on such decisions, only 23 of the 48 states at the time followed
this date. Twenty-three states celebrated Thanksgiving on November 30, the last
Thursday of the month that year, and Colorado and Texas observed Thanksgiving
on both of the dates.
The next couple of years there was still some vague confusion about which Thursday of the month was officially Thanksgiving, so President Roosevelt eventually signed legislation that declared the fourth Thursday in November as the holiday. The legislation also meant that future presidents could not change the date again. This way, because of how the calendar works, sometimes Thanksgiving happens to be the last Thursday of November. That's why we still celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November today.