Others eat squash, salads, or other fruit and vegetable dishes. Some families include breaking the turkey's wishbone as part of their celebration. The wishbone is found attached to the breast meat in the turkey's chest. After the meat has been removed and the wishbone has had a chance to become dry and brittle, two people each take one end of the bone, make a wish, and pull. Whoever ends up with the larger part of the bone gets their wish!
Many families watch the New York City Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which includes marching bands, floats, songs and performances from Broadway musicals, and giant helium-filled balloons! People like to watch football games—maybe your family likes to play one outside! Thanksgiving is a great time to help out people who might not be as lucky as you. Some people volunteer to serve food at homeless shelters; others donate to shelters or participate in canned food drives.
Another early event was held in in the Virginia Colony. Many people trace the origins of the modern Thanksgiving Day to the harvest celebration the Pilgrims held in Plymouth, Massachusetts in However, their first true thanksgiving was in , when they gave thanks for rain that ended a drought. These early thanksgivings took the form of a special church service, rather than a feast. In the second half of the s, thanksgivings after the harvest became more common and started to become annual events.
However, they were celebrated on different days in different communities and in some places there were more than one thanksgiving each year. George Washington, the first president of the United States, proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day in While we diligently research and update our holiday dates, some of the information in the table above may be preliminary.
He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.
And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.
In , New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends.
Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous it has become all but synonymous with the holiday, may or may not have been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in Today, however, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation.
Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the less fortunate. Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States.
It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters. A number of U. For some scholars, the jury is still out on whether the feast at Plymouth really constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States.
The Mayflower arrived at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of a curved peninsula later named Cape Cod, on November 21 and on that day drew up one of the most significant documents of American history, the Mayflower Compact. The Compact was a constitution formed by the people—the beginning of popular government in the world.
They then explored the lands along the bay formed by the peninsula. On December 22, after holding the first town meeting in America to decide where to build their homes, the Pilgrims went onshore at a site now called Plymouth Rock. There, on the shore above the rock, they settled. After years, their descendants and those of the Puritans are still sailing along. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was observed for a slightly different reason than celebration of the harvest—it was in honor of the creation of the new United States Constitution!
Washington was in his first term as president, and a young nation had just emerged successfully from the Revolution. While Thanksgiving became a yearly tradition in many communities—celebrated on different months and days that suited them—it was not yet a federal government holiday. Thomas Jefferson and many subsequent presidents felt that a public religious demonstration of piety was not appropriate for a government type of holiday in a country based in part on the separation of church and state.
While religious thanksgiving services continued, there were no further presidential proclamations marking Thanksgiving until the Civil War of the s. A depiction of Thanksgiving in , by Winslow Homer. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library. President Lincoln made a proclamation marking Thursday, November 26, , as Thanksgiving.
In this case, Lincoln was expressing gratitude to God and thanks to the Army for emerging successfully from the Battle of Gettysburg. In , President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the second-to-last Thursday. You could argue, however, that this helped create the shopping craze known as Black Friday. In , to end any confusion, the president and Congress established Thanksgiving as a United States federal holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, which is how it stands today!
Of course, Thanksgiving was not born of presidential proclamations. Thanksgiving Day in Canada is celebrated on the second Monday in October and has different origins than the American version of the holiday.
The first Thanksgiving meal observed in what is now Canada occurred in , when English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew held a meal to thank God for granting them safe passage through the wilds of the New World.
Some Quebecois may not celebrate the holiday at all. Today, Canadians often visit with family and friends to celebrate. The Thanksgiving food traditions tend to be pretty similar to their American neighbors: turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and cranberry sauce are traditional.
Add some maple syrup for a uniquely Canadian twist! See some Maple Syrup recipes. Canadian football is on the television, and many Canadians get outside for a nice hike or ramble in the woods, since the weather has not yet taken a turn for the worse.
Everyone is thankful for the harvest! Read more about the differences between Canadian and American Thanksgiving. But did you know that turkey was at one time a rare treat? Even though turkeys are much more affordable today, they still remain a celebratory symbol of bounty. In fact, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin ate roast turkey in foil packets for their first meal on the Moon.
The turkey may or may not have been offered when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in See what the Pilgrims ate and why we eat turkey today. Other common Thanksgiving traditions in the United States include volunteering for those less fortunate by donating food or time to homeless shelters or those in need.
0コメント