Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day in the United States is a holiday on the fourth Thursday of November. It precedes Black Friday.

The American celebration of Thanksgiving stretches back almost 400 years to the year 1621, when English settlers at Plymouth Rock gave thanks for their first harvest. The Pilgrims held a feast together with members of the local Wampanoag tribe who had helped them avoid starvation the previous winter.

In the beginning, Americans observed Thanksgiving only on an informal basis. Starting in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as an official national holiday. Since 1939, the official celebration always falls on the fourth Thursday in November.

More than any other American holiday, Thanksgiving centers around food. Turkey is crucial to the meal, but many families served duck or even venison too.

Seasonal produce with New World origins features prominently — corn, squash, beans, yams, pumpkin, cranberries.

In recent years it has become more and more common to accompany the whole meal with a fine American zinfandel or pinot noir wine. But any wine, white or red, will do.

What do people do?

Thanksgiving Day is traditionally a day for families and friends to get together for a special meal. The meal often includes a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie, and vegetables. Thanksgiving Day is a time for many people to give thanks for what they have.

Thanksgiving Day parades are held in some cities and towns on or around Thanksgiving Day. Some parades or festivities also mark the opening of the Christmas shopping season. Some people have a four-day weekend so it is a popular time for trips and to visit family and friends.

Public life

Most government offices, businesses, schools and other organizations are closed on Thanksgiving Day. Many offices and businesses allow staff to have a four-day weekend so these offices and businesses are also closed on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. Public transit systems do not usually operate on their regular timetables.

Thanksgiving Day it is one of the busiest periods for travel in the USA. This can cause congestion and overcrowding. Seasonal parades and busy football games can cause disruption to local traffic.

Foods of the season

·         Baked Country Ham (American Southern roasted ham)

Country hams are an old tradition in the American South. Fresh pork legs are salt-cured, sometimes smoked, and then dry aged for several months. Because the meat can be very salty, country hams must be soaked in water for a time to remove excess salt. Baked country ham is the perfect centerpiece for any family celebration. Leftovers are great for breakfast with red-eye gravy or served as a sandwich in buttermilk biscuits.

·         Candied Sweet Potatoes (American sugar-baked sweet potatoes)

Also called sweet potato casserole, candied sweet potatoes are a favorite dish in many American households at Thanksgiving and Easter, especially children. They are an extra treat when a layer of marshmallows is baked and browned on top. At Easter, chick- or rabbit-shaped and colored marshmallows called "Peeps" are sometimes used.

·         Cornbread Dressing (American cornmeal bread dressing)

Cornbread dressing is the only dressing there is for many Southerners. It's a favorite for Thanksgiving. The recipe below is a basic foundation for innumerable variations. Each cook has his or her favorite version.

·         Cranberry Sauce (American cranberry condiment)

Cranberry sauce is an essential part of any American Thanksgiving meal. Many families serve it for Christmas dinner too. Some people have to have cranberry sauce in the shape of a tin can. Others prefer this more naturalistic version. A less sweet cranberry sauce is served with game birds in northern Europe.

 

·         Glazed Pumpkin Spice Cookies (American cinnamon-scented baked treat)

Fall is pumpkin season, and these pumpkin cookies are perfect for Halloween, Thanksgiving or after raking up leaves on a crisp fall day. Enjoy their cakelike texture, subtle spice and sweet glaze with a cup of hot tea or fresh apple cider.

·         Pumpkin Pie (American pumpkin pastry dessert)

Like roast turkey and cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie is an essential part of any American Thanksgiving meal.

·         Roast Turkey with Pan Gravy (American holiday turkey) 

Turkey is so central to American Thanksgiving that the holiday is often referred to as Turkey Day. The two-step roasting method in this simple recipe produces a golden-brown turkey with moist breast meat. Roasting the turkey breast-side-down forces juices into the white meat of the breast that might otherwise dry out — the ultimate Turkey Day fail.

·         Wild Rice Pilaf (Canadian-American wild grain pilaf)

Wild rice is not a true rice, rather a type of grass seed that grows wild in the upper midwestern section of the United States and central Canada. Native Americans would harvest the grains from lakes and streams where the aquatic grass grew. Wild rice pilaf is the perfect accompaniment to duck, goose, and game meats. It is also an ideal addition to a Thanksgiving meal. 

Traditional Thanksgiving dinner

U.S. tradition compares the holiday with a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is continued in modern times with the Thanksgiving dinner, traditionally featuring turkey, playing a central role in the celebration of Thanksgiving.

In the United States, certain kinds of food are traditionally served at Thanksgiving meals. Firstly, baked or roasted turkey is usually the featured item on any Thanksgiving feast table (so much so that Thanksgiving is sometimes referred to as "Turkey Day"). Stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet corn, various fall vegetables (mainly various kinds of squashes), and pumpkin pie are commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner. All of these are actually native to the Americas or were introduced as a new food source to the Europeans when they arrived. Turkey may be an exception.

Giving thanks

Saying grace before carving the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner in the home of Earle Landis in Neffsville, Pennsylvania. (1942)

The tradition of giving thanks to God is continued today in various forms. Various religious and spiritual organizations offer worship services and events on Thanksgiving themes the weekend before, the day of, or the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Vacation and travel

On Thanksgiving Day, families and friends usually gather for a large meal or dinner. Consequently, 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. Most business and government workers are given Thanksgiving and the day after as paid holidays. Thanksgiving Eve, the night before Thanksgiving, is one of the busiest nights of the year for bars and clubs (where it is often identified by the derogatory name Blackout Wednesday), as many college students and others return to their hometowns to reunite with friends and family.

Parades

Since 1924, in New York City, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held annually every Thanksgiving Day from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Macy's flagship store in Herald Square, and televised nationally by NBC. The parade features parade floats with specific themes, scenes from Broadway plays, large balloons of cartoon characters, TV personalities, and high school marching bands. 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.

Also founded in 1924, America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit is one of the largest parades in the country. The parade runs from Midtown to Downtown Detroit and precedes the annual Detroit Lions Thanksgiving football game. The parade includes large balloons, marching bands, and various celebrity guests much like the Macy's parade and is nationally televised on various affiliate stations. The Mayor of Detroit closes the parade by giving Santa Claus a key to the city.

There are Thanksgiving parades in many other cities, including:

6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Ameren Missouri Thanksgiving Day Parade (St. Louis, Missouri)

America's Hometown Thanksgiving Parade (Plymouth, Massachusetts)

Belk Carolinas' Carrousel Parade (Charlotte, North Carolina)

FirstLight Federal Credit Union Sun Bowl Parade (El Paso, Texas)

H-E-B Holiday Parade (Houston, Texas)

McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade (Chicago, Illinois)

My Macy's Holiday Parade (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

Parada de los Cerros Thanksgiving Day Parade (Fountain Hills, Arizona)

UBS Parade Spectacular (Stamford, Connecticut) – held the Sunday before Thanksgiving so it doesn't directly compete with the Macy's parade 30 miles (48 km) away.

Most of these parades are televised on a local station, and some have small, usually regional, syndication networks; most also carry the parades via Internet television on the TV stations' websites.

Football

American football is an important part of many Thanksgiving celebrations in the United States. Professional football games are often held on Thanksgiving Day; until recently, these were the only games played during the week apart from Sunday or Monday night. The National Football League has played games on Thanksgiving every year since its creation; the tradition is referred to as the Thanksgiving Classic. The Detroit Lions have hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day since 1934, with the exception of 1939–1944 (due to World War II). In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys, who had been founded six years earlier, adopted the practice of hosting Thanksgiving games. It is widely rumored that the Cowboys sought a guarantee that they would regularly host Thanksgiving games as a condition of their very first one (since games on days other than Sunday were uncommon at the time and thus high attendance was not a certainty).

Television and radio

While not as prolific as Christmas specials, which usually begin right after Thanksgiving, there are many special television programs transmitted on or around Thanksgiving. In some cases, Christmas films and specials begin to be telecast on Thanksgiving Day, since the day signals the beginning of the Christmas season in the U.S.