Thanksgiving History and Culture

1. Thanksgiving

2. Origin of Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in the United States as a day of
giving thanks.
• It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
• Thanksgiving history in North America comes from Protestant English
traditions.

3. Origin of Thanksgiving: Protestants
• Before 1536, there were 95 Church holidays, plus 52 Sundays, when
people had to go church, could not go to work, and spent a lot of
money on parties.
• After King Henry VIII formed his own church, there were only 27
holidays.
• Protestants wanted to get rid of every holiday, including Christmas and
Easter, so they changed the church holidays into Days of Fasting and
Days of Thanksgiving.

4. Plymouth Thanksgiving
• In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is
commonly traced to a poorly documented 1621 celebration at
Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts.
• The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good
harvest.
• The feast was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest.

6. Plymouth Thanksgiving
• It lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53
Pilgrims (out of the original 100).
• The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived
their first winter in the New World.

8. Plymouth Thanksgiving
• Squanto, a Patuxet Native American
who resided with the Wampanoag
tribe, had taught the Pilgrims how to
catch eel and grow corn and served
as an interpreter for them.
• The Wampanoag leader, Massasoit,
had donated food stores to the new
colony during the first winter when
supplies brought from England were
insufficient.

10. George Washington
• As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the
first nation-wide thanksgiving celebration in America marking
November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be
observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal
favours of Almighty God".

11. The Day
• From the time of the Founding Fathers until the time of Lincoln, the
date Thanksgiving was observed varied from state to state. The final
Thursday in November had become the customary date in most U.S.
states by the beginning of the 19th century.

12. Abraham Lincoln
• Thanksgiving was first celebrated on the
same date by all states in 1863 when it
became an official Federal holiday.
• Federal: all of the states which form a single
country but have their own internal affairs.
• Author Sarah Josepha Hale wrote letters to
politicians for 40 years trying to make it an
official holiday.

13. Abraham Lincoln
• During the Civil War (1861-1865),
President Abraham Lincoln
proclaimed a national day of
"Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwelleth in
the Heavens", to be celebrated on
the last Thursday in November.
• Lincoln was trying to unite the
North and the South.
• The Confederate States of America
refused to acknowledge the
holiday, and so it wasn’t celebrated
until the 1870s.

14. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• On December 26,
1941, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed a joint
resolution of Congress
changing the national
Thanksgiving Day
from the last Thursday
in November to the
fourth Thursday.

15. Presidents Today
• In modern times the President of the United States will "pardon" a
turkey, which spares the bird's life and ensures that it will spend the
duration of its life roaming freely on farmland.

16. Obama Pardons Turkey Today
• http://youtu.be/QZlJW1Ygu20

17. Thanksgiving Day
• On Thanksgiving Day, families usually gather for a large dinner.
• The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest travel periods
of the year.
• Thanksgiving is a four-day or five-day weekend vacation for schools
and colleges.

18. Macy’s Parade
• Since 1924, in New York
City, the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade is
held annually every
Thanksgiving Day.
• The float that traditionally
ends the Macy's Parade is
the Santa Claus float, the
arrival of which is an
unofficial sign of the
beginning of the Christmas
season.
1925, Santa Claus Float

19. Football!
• American football is an important part of Thanksgiving.
• Professional football games are often held on Thanksgiving Day.
• In Oregon, we have a CIVIL WAR!!!!! The University of Oregon and
Oregon State University play their football game the day after
Thanksgiving. It’s been played for 120 years!
(GO DUCKS GO! FIGHT DUCKS FIGHT! WIN DUCKS WIN!!!!!)

20. FOOD!!!
• Baked or roasted turkey is usually the featured item on any
Thanksgiving feast table.
• So we call it “Turkey Day”!
• Other foods are: stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes,
cranberry sauce, sweet corn, various fall vegetables, pumpkin pie, and
apple pie.
• All of these are actually native to the Americas or were introduced as a
new food source to the Europeans when they arrived.

22. “Jingle Bells” – A Thanksgiving Song!
Written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and published under the title "One Horse
Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857.