Thought #42
November 2009
Author: Bill Thurston
Thanksgiving Day
The Webster Dictionary states:
Thanksgiving Day is a
day for giving thanks for divine goodness. In the United States, it is
celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada, it is celebrated on
the second Monday in October.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thanksgiving+day
Thanksgiving is celebrated by gathering friends and family to
eat, play, watch The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, watch football, and
hopefully take a nap after a big Thanksgiving Dinner. This year professional
football games will be Green Bay at Detroit, Oakland at Dallas, New York Giants
at Denver, and many college football games.
Thanksgiving evolved over the last four centuries. It was not always celebrated
each year, as shown in the following timeline:
1541 - Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, led a thanksgiving
Communion celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon, West Texas.
1565 - Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 settlers gathered for a meal with the
Timucuan Indians in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Florida.
1621 -
The first US Thanksgiving was
held between 21 September and 11 November 1621 in Massachusetts by 50 Plymouth
Pilgrims and their 90 Wampanoag neighbors.
1630 - Settlers observed the first Thanksgiving of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
in New England on July 8, 1630.
1777 - George Washington and his army on the way to Valley Forge, stopped in
blistering weather in open fields to observe the first Thanksgiving of the new
United States of America.
1777 to1783- Thanksgiving days were proclaimed annually by the US Congress.
1789 - George Washington declared November 26, 1789, as a national day of
"thanksgiving and prayer."
1795- George Washington declared Thanksgiving.
1798 &1799- John Adams declared Thanksgiving.
1815- James Madison declared
Thanksgiving twice in 1815.
1863 - President Abraham Lincoln resumed the tradition of Thanksgiving
proclamations in 1863. Since this date, Thanksgiving has been observed annually
in the United States.
1941-Thanksgiving was a custom unsanctified by law until President Roosevelt
signed a bill on 26 November 1941 that established
the fourth Thursday in November
as the national Thanksgiving public holiday. Only now did historian Alexander
Young rediscover Edward Winslow’s account of the 1621 harvest celebration. Young
isolated the description of the harvest celebration, and identified it as the
precedent for the New England Thanksgiving. So the traditional first
Thanksgiving was not part of our culture until 1941!
http://frontiers.loc.gov:8081/learn/features/thanksgiving/timeline/1541.html
http://plimoth.org/discover/thanksgiving/native-traditions.php
President Barack Obama will give a presidential pardon to Courage (a Princeton, N.C. turkey) on Wednesday 25 November in an annual ceremony in the Rose Garden. An alternate turkey, Carolina, will be on stand-by in case Courage is unable to perform his duties. After the pardon, Courage will be flown to Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., to serve as grand marshal of the annual Thanksgiving Day parade there. Following the parade, Courage and Carolina will settle into their new home in Frontierland at Disneyland.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/6480972/
Final Thought
Have a great Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend and remember that little walk after
Thanksgiving dinner, taken to rid you of all the dinner calories, needs to be
about 25 miles long!
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