The national holiday of Thanksgiving is celebrated every year. The United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia celebrate Thanksgiving on a variety of dates each year. Originally, it was a day to give thanks for the harvest and the previous year's blessing. It is also referred to as "Thanksgiving" in Germany and Japan. Thanksgiving in Canada is celebrated on the second Monday of October and in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November and elsewhere around the same time.
In addition to Thanksgiving's historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, the holiday has also been celebrated as a secular holiday for many years. Here are 3 interesting facts on this day:
Fact 1: Thanksgiving Day was declared a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln
Pic: Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Speech
In July 1863, it was a historic three days for the United States, even though the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in over 50,000 casualties for Americans. In 1863, President Lincoln promulgated Thanksgiving as a national holiday after Sarah Josepha Hale (writer of Mary's Little Lamb) convinced him to do so. In light of this victory and its cost, President Lincoln issued a proclamation on October 3, 1863 which read:
One of nine similar proclamations that Mr. Lincoln issued during the Civil War, this proclamation is regarded as the beginning of the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day.
Fact 2: It has been an annual tradition since Harry Truman to pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving
Pic: Harry Truman pardoning the first Turkey
President Harry Truman was presented with a turkey for Thanksgiving by the National Turkey Federation, a tradition that dates back to 1947. It has been fascinating to witness the official “pardoning” of White House turkeys over the past few years. A government announcement encouraging “poultryless Thursdays” grabbed national attention from September to November 1947. It was obvious in Washington that homemakers, restaurant owners, and poultry producers were outraged. As the poultry industry pointed out, the three biggest turkey holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day, happen to fall on Thursday. Poultry growers deflated the effort by Thanksgiving, but not before sending crates of live chickens "Hens for Harry" to the White House. It was an annual news niche that has endured to this day because of the turkey they presented to President Truman that December.
Fact 3: There was no Turkey which was served at the first Thanksgiving
Pic: The First Thanksgiving
There are many dishes served at Thanksgiving today, including turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, but at the First Thanksgiving there may have been wildfowl, corn, porridge, eel, fish, ducks, geese, oysters, lobsters, and venison.