Thanksgiving Day 2017: Significance, Date and How it is Celebrated in the United States Of America - JPKee.com

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that is celebrated with much pomp and fervor in the United States of America, Canada, some of the Carribean Islands and in Liberia. The festival was originally a harvest festival and was celebrated as a day for giving thanks for the harvest and of the preceding year. Similar festivals with similar names are celebrated in Germany and in Japan as well. Thanksgiving is celebrated on different days in Canada and USA. It is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. This year Thanksgiving will be celebrated on Thursday, November 23, 2017, in the USA. Thanksgiving has historical and religious significance but has taken on a secular meaning and is celebrated as a national secular holiday. The significance and how the festival is celebrated in the USA is outlined below.

Significance of Thanksgiving in the USA

Thanksgiving is actually a harvest festival but is now celebrated every year along with Christmas and New Year and is a part of the “holiday season” in the USA. The popular belief of Thanksgiving in the USA comes from the documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts where the Pilgrims first settled when they first came to America. The Pilgrims and Puritans who started emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried their religious tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving to New England. In 1619 when the 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia the day was noted as a day of remembrance and celebration and a day to thank God for the arrival of their ships safely in the harbor. The “First Thanksgiving” had several days of celebration including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623 and in 1631 the Puritan holiday in Boston.

Thanksgiving also has significance in the American Revolution. Several proclamations were issued by royal governors like John Hancock, George Washington, and the Continental Congress giving thanks to God and the events that favoured them. George Washington when he became the President of the United States proclaimed the first nationwide Thanksgiving in America on November 26, 1789.

As in Canada, Thanksgiving in the United States was celebrated on different dates throughout history. The last Thursday of November was the customary date that was followed by most states in the USA. However, in 1863, a presidential proclamation by Abraham Lincoln called for an official Thanksgiving and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the date of last Thursday in November as the day to celebrate Thanksgiving in a bid to foster a sense of unity among the states of US. On December 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and passed a joint resolution of Congress which changed the national Thanksgiving Day from last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday.

How is Thanksgiving celebrated?

Thanksgiving is a day which is celebrated with lots of food and wine. A typical Thanksgiving menu consists of roast turkey, roasted sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, and cranberry juice, winter vegetables like carrots and Brussel sprouts and pumpkin pie with a walnut crust for dessert. Every year the President pardons at least one turkey which becomes the national Thanksgiving bird and gains a reprieve from execution. In New York City there is an annual Thanksgiving parade.

Some people believe Thanksgiving to be racist

Many Native American people feel that Thanksgiving is a day that should be mourned and not celebrated. Many people believe that Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native American, their persecution, the theft of their native land and the assault on their culture.

However, in popular culture in movies and TV serials, Thanksgiving is shown as a happy and celebratory festival. The popular TV series F.R.I.E.N.D.S featured a Thanksgiving episode in every season of the series except one.

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Author - Vikash Kumar