Wednesday 3 December 2014

Belated Thanksgiving!


Hey guys! Last week was the American holiday Thanksgiving which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November each year. So first of all, belated Thanksgiving! I don’t want to tell you about the history of this special day, which we all learned in school, but about facts you may not know yet. First Thanksgiving ever was celebrated in 1621, when the pilgrims invited Natives to have a meal with them in honour to their first successful harvest.  It was kind of a festival which lasted 3 days. They didn’t just eat, they also hunted and did other entertaining things. What you probably didn’t know is that there were no turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie or potatoes. The Natives brought five deers, so they ate venison for sure. One thing many people don’t know is that Thanksgiving was not celebrated each year from 1621 on. In 1789 president George Washington announced the first ever national thanksgiving holiday which took place on Thursday November 26. However, it did not become an annual national holiday until the 19th century.  Sara Josepha Hale, an American writer, was inspired by a diary of pilgrim life and wanted to recreate that first Thanksgiving.  So she started a campaign to make thanksgiving a national holiday and published recipes for pumpkin pie, Turkey and stuffing. In 1863 during the civil war Abraham Lincoln announced that from now on Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the last Thursday of November each year.  In 1939, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in order to give the retailers more time to make money through the free Christmas shopping season. This was criticised by the public, so in 1941 Roosevelt signed a bill fixing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. From then on it has been celebrated each year.