Thursday, 28 November 2024
Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people.
Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days.
Thanksgiving has been held on the fourth Thursday in November since 1941, which means that the actual date of the holiday shifts each year. The earliest date that Thanksgiving can occur on is November 22; the latest, November 28.
Washington declared a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789, partly to honor the new U.S. Constitution. But it was President Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed in 1863 that Thanksgiving would be held the last Thursday of November.
Thanksgiving has become an annual tradition in the United States, and it often overshadows Christmas Day as the biggest holiday in the country.
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the second-to-last Thursday. It was the tail-end of the Depression, and Roosevelt’s goal was to create more shopping days before Christmas and to give the economy a boost.