Thanksgiving: A Thankful History For All
Thanksgiving is a significant and popular holiday in the US. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, which is on the 28th this year. Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada, Liberia, Germany, and the Philippines.
The History Behind Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving started as a way to celebrate the end of the harvesting season and the beginning of the coming year. Many countries worldwide celebrate similar holidays surrounding the end of the harvesting season, but Thanksgiving is extra special because it has religious roots. Religious roots in the sense that Catholics created Thanksgiving and that prayer is a part of most family’s traditions. It’s usually a prayer of thankfulness, hence the name “Thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving has been celebrated since the beginning of the US, but it was when Abraham Lincoln came into office that he made it a national holiday. By the start of the 19th century, it had become customary in most households in the US, superseding “Evacuation Day.” Evacuation Day is a holiday celebrating the departure of the British army from New York on November 25th, 1776.
A significant person who made Thanksgiving a holiday is Sarah Josepha Hale, who, for 40 years, sent letters to the government advocating for a holiday. Because of the ongoing Civil War, a nationwide Thanksgiving celebration was not realized until Reconstruction in the 1870s.
On October 31, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a presidential proclamation that set the holiday to fall on the fourth Thursday in November to boost the economy from the 30th of November. This gave people more days to shop for Christmas since Christmas wouldn’t be promoted until after the 30th of November. But some stats stuck with the 30th of November.
The double Thanksgiving continued for two more years until December 26th, 1941, when Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress changing the official national Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday in November starting in 1942, finally uniting one of the Nation’s most important holidays.
The Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated with family and friends, including turkey, pumpkin pie, and cranberries. One of the most important parts of Thanksgiving is “the wishbone.” The wishbone is a tradition where you break a bone in the chest of the Turk, and after dinner, two people grab one side of the wishbone and pull. Whoever gets the bigger piece gets their wish granted.
Claire Sugamele, an 11th grader at Meridian School, said, “I get to spend time with my family and cook with them.” Then she said, “I like to make peach cobbler.” She also said, “I watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in the morning and the Thanksgiving dog show in the afternoon with my family.”
As an exchange student from Sweden, I am really excited for Thanksgiving to come around. In Sweden, we are fond of the celebrations here in the US because of all the movies. What I’m most excited about is the pumpkin pie and the turkey, of course, but then there is always having your whole family, and it just sounds like such a charming holiday.