Thanksgiving

Many celebrations are seasonal, related to cultivation and farming, which signify preparing the land for plowing, seeding and planting, growing, and harvesting.
 Harvest celebration has always been maintained as the largest event, since the result of the year long work is cultivated. Thanksgiving can be dated back to harvest festivals, however during years it has found other reasons for celebrations. Because of the religious tone it adopted from very beginning, it was considered early on as a “Puritan” event. Even today, many religious organizations observe thanksgiving as a day of tranquility and peace and altruism, providing those in need with food and shelter and organizing a special mass in Christian churches.

The first recorded thanksgiving festivity was on the eight of September 1565 by Spanish settlers in Florida celebrating of their safe arrival. The next recorded celebration was on 30th of April 1598 by another group of Spanish settlers in Texas, and for the same reason. The first group of English settlers to celebrate thanksgiving (who also marked it as an annual celebration) arrived in Virginia on the fourth of December 1619. Then, there was a thanksgiving feast related to the successful harvest of 1621. None of these celebrations were in the form of a thanksgiving celebration as we know them now, since the 1621 event was purely a harvest feast, while others were for safe arrival. Thanksgiving was thereafter celebrated from early on by some colonies, not in a regular basis and not on a certain date. In 1777 the congress issued the first Thanksgiving Day proclamation, which was repeated in 1795 by George Washington. After Washington, Some presidents had an interest to proclaim thanksgiving as a holiday, and some did not, until 1817 when governor of New York proclaimed an annual celebration. Abraham Lincoln declared a national thanksgiving holiday to be celebrated on the last Thursday of each November, beginning in 1863. In 1939, the year when there were five Thursdays in the month of November, President Franklin Roosevelt changed the date of the celebration to the next to the last Thursday of the month. In 1941 US Congress passed the law to consider the fourth Thursday of each November as the Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving dinner is a family event. Usually elders start preparing the dinner from early in the morning on Thursday. They invite children and close relatives to gather and have the feast in late afternoon and early evening. Turkey is usually the main dish in thanksgiving dinner; but some people use ham instead. Side dishes include cranberry sauce to be consumed with turkey, stuffing, mashed potato and gravy, string beans and corn and other seasonal vegetables, and pumpkin pie for desert.

Due to the long holiday (four days for most people) and closure of schools for more than a week, some people use the opportunity for travelling. There are also parades in many cities. Past years parades in the US have been in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Texas, Missouri, Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, and Minnesota. The day after thanksgiving is called Black Friday, when stores entice people to shop by advertising the start of the Christmas shopping season and offering some discounts. Sport matches, specially American football, have become a large part of thanksgiving throughout years. There is usually a football game on the day after Thanksgiving Day. Some other sports are played during the thanksgiving holiday as well.