- The First Thanksgiving was celebrated to give thanks to God for helping the pilgrims survive the brutal winter.
- 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 large role in the celebration of Thanksgiving.
- Thanksgiving Day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863.
- Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.
- About 91% of families in the United States eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
- President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.
- A Thanksgiving Day service is held in Hooglandse (Netherlands) Kerk to commemorate the hospitality the Pilgrims received in Leiden on their way to the New World.
- Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey.
- Californians are the largest consumers of turkey in the United States.
- Though there is no real evidence that turkey was served at the Pilgrim’s first thanksgiving, in a book written by the Pilgrim’s Governor Bradford he does make mention of wild turkeys.
- President Abraham Lincoln established the original date for our National Thanksgiving Day celebration in 1863.
- Some of the details of the American Thanksgiving story are myths that developed in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of the effort to forge a common national identity in the aftermath of the Civil War and in the melting pot of new immigrants.
12 facts about Thanksgiving Day
