Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada, the United States, some of the Caribbean islands, and Liberia. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November every year in the United States, and around the same time in other places, and the second Monday of October in Canada. It began as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the proceeding year. According to Google, the modern day Thanksgiving tradition in the United States is for the 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present day Massachusetts. According to history.com, “In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.”

In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday. They each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition.  Abraham Lincoln heeded a request from a journalist to have Thanksgiving as a national holiday at the peak of the Civil War in 1863, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But, in 1941 he signed a bill making it the fourth Thursday in November.

Prayers of thanks and ceremonies are common ways of celebration. Families come from other states and locations to spend the holiday with family members. It now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends. A typical Thanksgiving dinner consists of turkey, nearly 90 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving, whether roasted, baked or deep-fried. Mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread, stuffing, pumpkin pie, corn, rolls, deviled eggs and whatever else a family chooses to serve also make an appearance at the dinner table. Since 1924, parades have also become a part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States.