Thanksgiving

The celebrated in the United States and Canada Thanksgiving ( for " thanksgiving" in English ) is a form of thanksgiving, but deviates strongly from the fixed by European traditions from.

History

In the United States, Thanksgiving is a national holiday, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month November. The feast cited items from the pioneer life of the Pilgrims ( Plymouth Colony ) and thus carries a certain national character. Thanksgiving in the United States, the most important family celebration in Ordinary Time, also are used by many families and friends or other guests invited. In its center stands a large meal (often dinner). Because they often gather all the generations of a family and they live scattered on the part of all parts of the country, there is at airports and roads of the country around the festival much more traffic than the other seasons.

For "Black Friday" ( the Friday after Thanksgiving) granted the retail traditionally high discounts. This day is often used for the first Christmas shopping, from then on will be decorated for Christmas increasingly in public. For the economy, the sales of this day is an important sentiment indicator.

In Canada, the festival is celebrated on the second Monday in October. There, Thanksgiving is a holiday in most provinces, so that it forms one of the popular long weekends throughout the year. The festival was originally on October 12th ( Columbus Day, the day on which the "New World " was discovered ) terminated, but was - laid on a Monday - as well as Columbus Day in the USA.

Origin

There are different views about where the starting point for Thanksgiving festivities is to be set. The first known Erntedankfestlichkeit in North America was probably committed by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the tribe of the Caddo on May 23, 1541 in what is now Texas. The discovery of food was celebrated by the expedition of the Spaniard.

A similar festival was a few years later on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida, instead, where Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men their safe landing in the "New World " celebrated.

The first Anglophone Thanksgiving may 1578 took place in Newfoundland, where the navigator Martin Frobisher celebrated the safe return of an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage.

Another festival was celebrated on August 4, 1619 in what is now Virginia, where 38 colonists celebrated their arrival from England.

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, they celebrated together with the native Wampanoag Indians in the fall of 1621 a three-day harvest festival. Without their help it would not have survived the following winter. Approx. 90 Wampanoag Indians and 50 colonists to have attended this celebration; but it is not historically proven. The Indians say that their Thanksgiving celebrations have taken place many years before. The beginning of this celebration is so far also not been established. Both the Americans and the Canadians lead its present Thanksgiving back to this festival. The Loyalists brought the American Thanksgiving after the Revolutionary War to Canada.

Further development

A first Thanksgiving Day as U.S. president promoted George Washington on October 3, 1789. President Abraham Lincoln set the date of the national holiday on 3 October 1863 the last Thursday in November of each year determined. 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to move the holiday to the penultimate Thursday to stimulate the economy by a longer shopping season before Christmas ( November 1939, five Thursdays ). In the following two years there were sometimes contradictory regulations in individual states, to the Congress in 1941 as a compromise the holiday firmly set on the fourth Thursday in November.

Reception

Among the Indians of this holiday is very controversial. That was the reason why Squanto could speak on the Feast of the Pilgrim Fathers to them in English, which he had been previously deported along with other Wampanoag of Captain Thomas Hunt to England. Later, the Wampanoag were decimated by introduced by the settlers diseases and wars, and finally locked into reservations. The following colonization of the continent by Europeans some Indian tribes have been completely destroyed and the other locked in reserves. Most descendants of the survivors see today is not much point in it, even to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Customs

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that is celebrated in the U.S. on the fourth Thursday of November. To extend their weekend to take workers like in addition to the Friday off. Schools and universities often make it a four - to five-day school-free time. Even today, most comes the whole family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins ​​and children together.

Although Thanksgiving is a national holiday, it will be every year until a few days ago formally proclaimed by the President of the United States. In the proclamation of U.S. President speaks regularly at major events of the past or even the next year. Moreover, he brings the gratitude of the nation to the Most High expression.

The traditional Thanksgiving meal, there are dishes that it should have been given at the first Thanksgiving feast: a roasted and stuffed turkey ( Roasted Turkey) with a wide selection of side dishes and desserts like cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (Sweet Potatoes ), apple - and pumpkin pie ( apple pie and pumpkin pie ) and various vegetables such as squash, green peas and corn.

In the White House, the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation has been established, in which the industry associations each year to the President to hand over a turkey, the pardon the president since the 1990s usually.

The Thanksgiving meal is often accompanied by a prayer of thanks, or everyone says after the series for which you are especially thankful this year. Such customs vary greatly from family to family or the relevant friends. One custom is, for example, that two fixed subscriber, the dried wishbone ( " Wishbone " ) of the turkey pull apart each with the little finger until it breaks into two parts. He whose piece is larger, has a wish free. Are to Thanksgiving, other than for Christmas, gifts unusual.