Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day, a harvest festival, is celebrated primarily in the US and Canada and traditionally it has been a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest.  Even though it started out as a religious holiday, it is now known as a secular holiday, and Thanksgiving is sometimes referred to as Turkey Day. In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated the second Monday in October, and in the United States, it is celebrated the fourth Thursday in November.

The first Thanksgiving celebration was held in 1621 by the Plymouth Colony after they suffered a harsh Winter, and they invited the Wampanoag Indians to the celebration.  After this celebration, the thirteen colonies did not celebrate the holiday at the same time until 1777, and President George Washington declared it a holiday in 1789. To unite the colonies after the civil war President Lincoln with the encouragement of poet and editor Sarah J. Hale, Lincolon gave his Thanksgiving  Proclamation in 1963 which declared the last Thursday in November a day of thanks.

To make the Christmas shopping season longer in 1939, 1940, and 1941President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November, but controversy followed this act, and Congress passed a joint resolution in 1941 decreeing that Thanksgiving should fall on the fourth Thursday of November, where it has remained throughout history ever since 1941.