Today is the fourth Thursday of November. It’s Thanksgiving Day.
So, let’s be grateful and give thanks, whatever reason we may have to do so.
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated in the USA, Canada and some other countries. It began a long time ago as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest of the preceding year.
Harvest is the amount of crops that are gathered. If you gather a lot, it’s a bountiful harvest, just like here:
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The Origin of Thanksgiving
Many people believe Thanksgiving Day originates from the first 1621 celebration in Plymouth /ˈpli-məth/, Massachusetts. We’re going to talk about it in a moment, but the holiday dates back to the 16th century when English Reformation began in the reign of king Henry VIII. Days of Thanksgiving were supposed to replace the innumerable Catholic holidays that were celebrated at that time. At least some Puritans wanted that.
Then, in the second half of the 16th century and in the 17th century Days of Thanksgiving were called when something important happened that the people of England should be grateful for, like for example in 1588 after the victory over the Spanish Armada
or in 1606, the year following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in London. The latter actually then developed into Guy Fawkes Day which is celebrated mainly in the UK on November 5.
So, the tradition of giving thanks for all kinds of blessings came to the New World with the Puritans. But the first actual Thanksgiving in America is poorly documented. It can be traced to two events.
In 1619 a group of English settlers arrived in Virginia. To express their gratitude for being assigned land in the colony, they celebrated the day of arrival as the day of thanksgiving to the Almighty God.
The second event, probably more widely known to most of you, is the first Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The First Plymouth Thanksgiving Celebration
So, what do we know about that? Actually not much. According to tradition it all began in Plymouth Colony, which at that time was a separate colony, but later, in 1691, was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Anyway, the winter of 1620/1621 was harsh and food supplies were scarce. It was a difficult time for the Mayflower Pilgrims. But they were helped by the Wampanoags /ˈwɑːmpənɔːɡ/, a native American people and Squanto, the last surviving member of the Patuxet tribe. These guys gave the Pilgrims food in exchange for protection against the rival Narragansett /ˌnerəˈgænsət/ Indians.
The following fall, in 1621, to celebrate the bountiful harvest of that year, the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving together with the Indians who had helped them survive the winter. This is what tradition has to say about it.
A National Holiday
But how did Thanksgiving become a national holiday? Well, it took some time.
After the first Thanksgiving in 1621 (Plymouth) or 1619 (Virginia), depending on who you ask, the day was not celebrated as a regular holiday for years. Occasional days of Thanksgiving were held in New England if there was a special occasion, but the annual harvest festival wasn’t established until the late 1660s. Still, Thanksgiving was not a national holiday just yet.
Until the American Revolution Thanksgiving days were proclaimed from time to time by various state and church leaders, mostly to thank God for all sorts of events that were favorable to them.
But the first nationwide celebration of Thanksgiving was proclaimed by President George Washington in 1789. November 26 of that year was to be celebrated as the day of public thanksgiving and prayer.
In the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Thanksgiving was held on different days in different states. By the beginning of the 19th century it was celebrated on the last Thursday of November in most states.
But modern Thanksgiving was proclaimed for all states in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. Actually, he was influenced by a writer, Sarah Josepha Hale, who campaigned for the creation of that national holiday. By the way, you may have learned as a child the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, which was then turned into a popular song. It was written by Sarah Josepha Hale.
Anyway, Lincoln set the holiday for the last Thursday of November. Because of the ongoing war, it wasn’t officially held until Reconstruction was completed in the following decade.
Finally, in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the national Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday of November, which is how it’s still celebrated today.
How Is Thanksgiving Day Celebrated?
Thanksgiving Day is nowadays a good occasion for families to meet and share a meal. A typical Thanksgiving meal includes turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Here you can see cranberries.
In order to make pumpkin pie, you first have to buy pie pumpkins.
Did you ever try pumpkin pie? Did it taste good?
Now, turkey, probably the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word THANKSGIVING in the context of food.
Well, you have to follow some steps to prepare the turkey. The first step is to catch the turkey. The bird looks like this:
The following steps are too drastic to be shown here. Anyway, you should end up with this on your plate:
There are many other options as far as food is concerned, depending on what you like. What about you?
But Thanksgiving is not just about eating. Many people attend church services on that day. You can also take part in or just watch special sporting events and parades. There’s the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York, McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago, or the 6abc Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia, to mention just a few.
Expressing Gratitude
But first of all, Thanksgiving is about thanking and being grateful. Do you know how to express gratitude in English apart from the common THANK YOU or THANKS? Well, there are quite a few ways to do it.
Here are just a couple examples. So, if you want to thank someone, you can say one of the following:
It was great / awesome / very kind / very thoughtful of you,
Thanks a bunch,
I can’t thank you enough,
I appreciate it,
I’m grateful for that,
I’m eternally grateful,
It means a lot to me,
You’re the best,
You’re awesome,
You’re great,
Oh, you shouldn’t have!,
I don’t know what to say,
I owe you one.
And there are many other ways of expressing gratitude. Now, after you finish reading this article, just get up and go to your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, daughter, son, friend, lover or boss and thank them for being there for you when you need them.
Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which is the first day after Thanksgiving, also mark the beginning of the so-called Holiday Season, time of intense shopping before Christmas, but this is a subject of its own.
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