Thanksgiving Facts

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This quote aptly describes the meaning of thanksgiving which is a joyous event that is celebrated with love and gratitude. Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day is an important day in the United States as well as other parts of the world.

In America, Thanksgiving Day is a tradition where people spend time with their family, watching parades that have marching bands and floats, feasting on turkey and other home-cooked food and of course giving thanks for everything they have been blessed with in the year gone by. If you want to know more about thanksgiving, here are some Thanksgiving facts.

• To reach North America, the pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.
• It was in December 1620 that the pilgrims arrived in North America.
• The ship the pilgrims sailed in was called the "Mayflower."
• The pilgrims brought beer with them in the Mayflower.
• The first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
• The Thanksgiving Day celebration lasted for 3 days.
• In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in the month of November.
• The pilgrims learnt to cultivate land from the Wampanoag Indians.
• A turkey’s wishbone is treated as a good luck ritual on Thanksgiving Day.
• Edward Winslow, who was a participant in the First Thanksgiving, said that the Thanksgiving feast consisted of corn, barley and fowl which included wild turkeys, water fowl and venison.
• The largest consumers of turkey in the United States are the Californians.
• It was in the year 1939 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored the Thursday before the last of November as Thanksgiving Day. The idea behind his decision was to make the Christmas season last longer and thus bring about an increase in the economy of the state.
• It was Benjamin Franklin who wanted the turkey to be known as the national bird of the United States. However, Thomas Jefferson opposed his decision.
• 1941 was the year in which the Congress passed an official proclamation which stated that from that year onwards Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month of November. It also said that Thanksgiving would be celebrated as a legal holiday.
• The first Thanksgiving Day Proclamation was issued in the year 1789 and again in 1795, by President George Washington.
• Thanksgiving Day was celebrated as a national day of prayer and thanksgiving in 1863 because of the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor of a magazine. It was she who began a thanksgiving campaign in 1827.
• In Canada Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in the month of October.
• It was in the 1920’s that the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade tradition began.