Giving thanks
Thanksgiving was founded as a religious observance for all
the members of the community to give thanks to God for a common purpose. A 1541
thanksgiving mass was held by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado and his expedition of 1,500 men at Palo Duro Canyon in what is today
the Texas Panhandle. A thanksgiving took
place after the victory in the 1777 Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary
War. In his 1789 National Thanksgiving
Proclamation, President Washington gave many noble reasons for a national
Thanksgiving, including "for the civil and religious liberty", for
"useful knowledge", and for God's "kind care" and "His
Providence".[55] After President Washington delivered this message, the
"Episcopal Church, of which President Washington was a member, announced
that the first Thursday in November would become its regular day for giving
thanks".
The tradition of giving thanks to God is continued today in
many forms, most notably the attendance of religious services, as well as the
saying of a mealtime prayer before Thanksgiving dinner. Many houses of worship
offer worship services and events on Thanksgiving themes the weekend before,
the day of, or the weekend after Thanksgiving. At home, it is a holiday tradition in many
families to begin the Thanksgiving dinner by saying grace (a prayer before or
after a meal). The custom is portrayed
in the photograph "Family Holding Hands and Praying Before a Thanksgiving
Meal". Before praying, it is a common practice at the dining table for
"each person [to] tell one specific reason they're thankful to God that
year." While grace is said, some
families hold hands until the prayer concludes, often indicated with an "Amen".
Joy Fisher, a Baptist writer, states that "this holiday
takes on a spiritual emphasis and includes recognition of the source of the
blessings they enjoy year round – a loving God." In the same vein, Hesham A. Hassaballa, an
American Muslim scholar and physician, has written that Thanksgiving "is
wholly consistent with Islamic principles" and that "few things are
more Islamic than thanking God for His blessings". Similarly many Sikh Americans also celebrate
the holiday by "giving thanks to Almighty".
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, performances
from Broadway musicals, 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. It is billed as the world's largest
parade.
The oldest Thanksgiving Day parade is the Philadelphia's
Thanksgiving Day Parade, which launched in 1920 and takes place in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia's parade was long associated with
Gimbels, a prominent Macy's rival, until that store closed in 1986. Its current sponsors are WPVI-TV, the channel
6 ABC affiliate in Philadelphia; and Dunkin' Donuts donut chain.[citation
needed]
Founded in 1924, the same year as the Macy's parade,
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:
·
Ameren Missouri Thanksgiving Day Parade (St.
Louis, Missouri)
·
America's
Hometown Thanksgiving Parade (Plymouth, Massachusetts)
·
Belk Carolinas' Carrousel Parade (Charlotte,
North Carolina)
·
Celebrate the Season Parade (Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania)
·
FirstLight Federal Credit Union Sun Bowl Parade
(El Paso, Texas)
·
H-E-B Holiday Parade (Houston, Texas)
·
Uncle Dan's Thanksgiving Parade (Chicago,
Illinois)
·
Santa Claus Parade (Peoria, Illinois), the
nation's oldest, dating to 1887 and held the day after Thanksgiving
·
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.
Several other parades have a loose association with
Thanksgiving, thanks to CBS's now-discontinued All-American Thanksgiving Day
Parade coverage. Parades that were covered during this era were the Aloha
Floral Parade held in Honolulu, Hawaii every September, the Toronto Santa Claus
Parade in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the Opryland Aqua Parade (held from
1996 to 2001 by the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in
Nashville); the Opryland parade was discontinued and replaced by a taped parade
in Miami Beach, Florida in 2002. A Disneyland parade was also featured on CBS
until Disney purchased rival ABC.
For many years the Santa Claus Lane Parade (now Hollywood
Christmas Parade) in Los Angeles was held on the Wednesday evening before
Thanksgiving. In 1978 this was switched to the Sunday following the holiday.
Sports
American football
American football is an important part of many Thanksgiving
celebrations in the United States, a tradition that dates to the earliest era
of the sport in the late 19th century. 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 except during World War II.
The Detroit Lions have hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day from 1934 to 1938
and again every year since 1945. In
1966, the Dallas Cowboys, who had been founded six years earlier, adopted the
practice of hosting Thanksgiving games. The league added a third game in prime time in
2006, which aired on the NFL Network, then moved to NBC in 2012. The third game
has no set site or team, providing an opportunity for all teams in the league
to host a Thanksgiving game in the future.
For college football teams that participate in the highest
level (all teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, as well as three teams in
the historically black Southwestern Athletic Conference of the Championship
Subdivision), the regular season ends on Thanksgiving weekend, and a team's
final game is often against a regional or historic rival, such as the Iron Bowl
between Alabama and Auburn, the Civil War between Oregon and Oregon State, the
Apple Cup between Washington and Washington State, and Michigan and Ohio State
playing in their rivalry game. Most of
these college games are played on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving,
but usually one or two college games are played on Thanksgiving itself. The
lower divisions of the game, including all of Divisions II and III, the NAIA,
club football and the rest of the Championship Subdivision (except the Ivy
League, whose season ends before Thanksgiving[citation needed]), are in the
midst of playoff tournaments over Thanksgiving weekend.
Some high school football games (which include some state
championship games), and informal "Turkey Bowl" contests played by
amateur groups and organizations, are frequently held on Thanksgiving weekend. Games of football preceding or following the
meal in the backyard or a nearby field are also common during many family
gatherings. Amateur games typically follow less organized backyard-rules,
two-hand touch or flag football styles.
Other sports
College basketball holds several elimination tournaments on
over Thanksgiving weekend, before the conference season. These include the Anaheim-based
Wooden Legacy, the Orlando-based AdvoCare Invitational, and the Bahamas-based Battle
4 Atlantis, all of which are televised on ESPN2 and ESPNU in marathon format.
The NCAA owned-and-operated NIT Season Tip-Off has also since moved to
Thanksgiving week. This is a relatively new phenomenon, dating only to 2006.
The National Basketball Association also briefly played on Thanksgiving, albeit
in the evening, with a doubleheader airing Thanksgiving night on TNT, a
practice that ran from 2009 to 2011; the Atlanta Hawks hosted the early game
each year, while the Los Angeles Clippers hosted the late game in both 2010 and
2011 (both of the 2011 NBA Thanksgiving games were canceled due to a labor
dispute). The NBA has not scheduled any Thanksgiving games since then, mainly
due to the move of the NFL's primetime Thanksgiving game to NBC.
Though golf and auto racing are in their off-seasons on
Thanksgiving, there are events in those sports that take place on Thanksgiving
weekend. The Turkey Night Grand Prix is an annual automobile race that takes
place at various venues in southern California on Thanksgiving night; due in
part to the fact that this is after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and IndyCar
Series have finished their seasons, it allows some of the top racers in the
United States to participate. In golf, Thanksgiving weekend was the traditional
time of the Skins Game from 1983 to 2008; the event was canceled in 2009 due to
a lack of sponsorship and a difficulty in drawing star talent. In 2018, golf returned to Thanksgiving weekend
with The Match, a one-round match play contest between Tiger Woods and Phil
Mickelson played on pay-per-view.
The world championship pumpkin chunking contest was held in
early November in Delaware and televised each Thanksgiving on Science Channel,
but a lawsuit arising from an injury suffered by one of the producers in the
2016 event caused the cancellation of the 2017 one.
In ice hockey, the National Hockey League announced, as part
of its decade-long extension with NBC, that they would begin airing a game on
the Friday afternoon following Thanksgiving beginning the 2011–12 NHL season;
the game has since been branded as the "Thanksgiving Showdown". (The
Boston Bruins have played matinees on Black Friday since at least 1990, but
2011 was the first time the game was nationally televised.) The NHL had played
games on Thanksgiving itself, usually scheduling games involving Canadian teams
(but not always, as was the case in 2016, when the league scheduled a
nationally televised game Thanksgiving night between two American teams on the
West Coast).[citation needed] In Canada, Thanksgiving is in October, although
no games were scheduled in 2011 and only one was scheduled in 2012 (both the
Thanksgiving Showdown and the lone Canadian game on U.S. Thanksgiving were
canceled as a result of a labor dispute in 2012); as a result of the effective
day off, almost all of the league's teams play the day after Thanksgiving.
Professional wrestling promotions have typically held
premier pay-per-view events on or around the time of Thanksgiving. This trend
began in 1983 when Jim Crockett Promotions, the largest promoter in the
National Wrestling Alliance, introduced Starrcade. Starrcade, later
incorporated into World Championship Wrestling, moved off Thanksgiving in
1988;[88] the year prior, the rival World Wrestling Federation had introduced
Survivor Series, an event that continues to be hosted in November to the
present day.
Many American cities hold road running events, known as
"turkey trots", on Thanksgiving morning, so much so that as of 2018,
Thanksgiving is the most popular race day in the U.S. Depending on the organizations involved, these
can range from one-mile (1.6 km) fun runs to full marathons (although no races
currently use the latter; the Atlanta Marathon stopped running on Thanksgiving
in 2010). Most turkey trots range from between three and ten miles (5–16 km).
Television
While not as prolific as Christmas specials, which usually
begin right after Thanksgiving, there are many special television programs
transmitted on or around Thanksgiving, such as A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, in
addition to the live parades and football games mentioned above. In some cases,
television broadcasters begin programming Christmas films and specials to run
on Thanksgiving Day, taking the day as a signal for the beginning of the
Christmas season.
Radio
"Alice's Restaurant", an 18-minute monologue by
Arlo Guthrie that is partially based on an incident that happened on
Thanksgiving in 1965, was first released in 1967. It has since become a
tradition on numerous classic rock and classic hits radio stations to play the
full, uninterrupted recording to much fanfare each Thanksgiving Day, a
tradition that appears to have originated with counterculture radio host Bob
Fass, who introduced the song to the public on his radio show. Another song that traditionally gets played on
numerous radio stations (of many different formats) is "The Thanksgiving
Song", a 1992 song by Adam Sandler.
Prominent radio host Rush Limbaugh has an annual tradition
known as The Real Story of Thanksgiving, in which he gives his interpretation
of the Thanksgiving story on his program the day before Thanksgiving. The public radio series Science Friday
broadcasts coverage of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies on the day after Thanksgiving.
Turkey pardoning
Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the
President of the United States with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys, in
a ceremony known as the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. John F.
Kennedy was the first president reported to spare the turkey given to him (he
said he didn't plan to eat the bird), and Ronald Reagan was the first to grant
the turkey a presidential pardon, which he jokingly presented to his 1987
turkey. The turkey was then indeed be spared and sent to a petting zoo).
Some legends date the origins of pardoning turkey to the
Harry Truman administration or even to Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son's Christmas
turkey; both stories have been quoted in more recent presidential speeches, but
neither has any evidence in the Presidential record.[97] In more recent years,
two turkeys have been pardoned, in case the original turkey becomes unavailable
for presidential pardoning.
George H. W. Bush, who served as vice president under
Reagan, made the turkey pardon a permanent annual tradition upon assuming the
presidency in 1989, a tradition that has been carried on by every president
each year since. The pardoned turkeys
have typically ended up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. From 1989 to 2004 they were sent to a
children's farm called Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, Virginia. From 2009 to 2013 they were sent to George
Washington's Mount Vernon estate near Alexandria, Virginia, and in 2014 they
were sent to an estate in Leesburg, Virginia once owned by former state
governor and turkey farmer Westmoreland Davis.
However, from 2005 to 2009 they were sent to either Walt Disney World or
Disneyland. The turkeys rarely live to
see the next Thanksgiving due to being bred for large size.
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 (78% in
2007) 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.
Criticism and
controversy
Much like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving is considered by some
to be a "national day of mourning", as a celebration of the genocide
and conquest of Native Americans by colonists. Thanksgiving has long carried a distinct
resonance for Native Americans, who see the holiday as an embellished story of
"Pilgrims and Natives looking past their differences" to break bread.
Professor Dan Brook of the University of
California, Berkeley condemns the "cultural and political amnesia" of
Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving: "We do not have to feel guilty, but
we do need to feel something." Professor Robert Jensen of the University
of Texas at Austin is somewhat harsher: "One indication of moral progress
in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its
self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by
a self-reflective collective fasting." Some of the controversy regarding Thanksgiving
has been used to justify the Christmas creep (the act of putting up Christmas
decorations before Thanksgiving). Those who sympathize with this view
acknowledge it as a small minority view; author and humanist John G. Rodwan,
who does not celebrate Thanksgiving, noted "If you put forth the
interpretation (...) that touches on the dishonorable treatment of the native
population that lived in what became the United States, then you are likely to
be dismissed as some sort of crank (.)"
Since 1970, the United American Indians of New England, a
protest group led by Frank "Wamsutta" James has accused the United
States and European settlers of fabricating the Thanksgiving story and of
whitewashing a genocide and injustice against Native Americans, and it has led
a National Day of Mourning protest on Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock in
Plymouth, Massachusetts in the name of social equality and in honor of
political prisoners.
On November 27, 1969, as another notable example of
anti-Thanksgiving sentiment, hundreds of supporters traveled to Alcatraz on
Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the Occupation of Alcatraz (which had started a
week earlier and lasted until 1971) by Native Americans of All Tribes. The
American Indian Movement and the Native American Church (peyote religion) both
also hold a negative view of Thanksgiving; the AIM has used it as a platform
for protest, most notably when they took over a Mayflower float in a
Thanksgiving Day parade. Some Native
Americans hold "Unthanksgiving Day" celebrations in which they mourn
the deaths of their ancestors, fast, dance, and pray. This tradition has been taking place since
1975.
The perception of Thanksgiving among Native Americans is
not, however, universally negative. Tim Giago, founder of the Native American
Journalists Organization, seeks to reconcile Thanksgiving with Native American
traditions. He compares Thanksgiving to "wopila", a thanks-giving
celebration practiced by Native Americans of the Great Plains. He wrote in The
Huffington Post: "The idea of a day of Thanksgiving has been a part of the
Native American landscape for centuries. The fact that it is also a national
holiday for all Americans blends in perfectly with Native American
traditions." He also shares personal anecdotes of Native American families
coming together to celebrate Thanksgiving. Members of the Oneida Indian Nation marched in
the 2010 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a float called "The True
Spirit of Thanksgiving" and have done so every year since.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the American
Association for the Advancement of Atheism (4A) opposed the celebration of
Thanksgiving Day, offering an alternative observance called Blamegiving Day,
which was in their eyes, "a protest against Divine negligence, to be observed
each year on Thanksgiving Day, on the assumption, for the day only, that God
exists." Citing their view of the
separation of church and state, some atheists in recent times have particularly
criticized the annual recitation of Thanksgiving proclamations by the President
of the United States, because these proclamations often revolve around the theme
of giving thanks to God.
The move by retailers to begin holiday sales during
Thanksgiving Day (as opposed to the traditional day after) has been criticized
as forcing (under threat of being fired) low-end retail workers, who compose an
increasing share of the nation's workforce, to work odd hours and to handle
atypical, unruly crowds on a day reserved for rest. In response to this controversy, Macy's and
Best Buy (both of which planned to open on Thanksgiving, even earlier than they
had the year before) stated in 2014 that most of their Thanksgiving Day shifts
were filled voluntarily by employees who would rather have the day after Thanksgiving
off instead of Thanksgiving itself. Blue
laws in several Northeastern states prevent retailers in those states from
opening on Thanksgiving. Such retailers typically open at midnight on the day
after Thanksgiving to circumvent the laws as much as legally possible.
Journalist Edward R. Murrow and producer David Lowe
deliberately chose Thanksgiving weekend 1960 to release Murrow's final story
for CBS News. Entitled Harvest of Shame, the hour-long documentary was designed
"to shock Americans into action" in regard to the treatment of
impoverished migrant workers in the country, hoping to contrast Thanksgiving
dinner and its excesses with the poverty of those who picked the vegetables. Murrow acknowledged the documentary portrayed
the United States from a hostile perspective and, when he left CBS to join the
United States Information Agency in 1961, unsuccessfully tried to stop the
special from being aired in the United Kingdom.
Date
Since being fixed on the fourth Thursday in November by law
in 1941, the holiday in the United States can occur on any date from November
22 to 28. When it falls on November 22 or 23, it is not the last Thursday, but
the penultimate Thursday in November. Regardless, it is the Thursday preceding
the last Saturday of November.
Because Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, all United States
government offices are closed and all employees are paid for that day. It is
also a holiday for the New York Stock Exchange and most other financial markets
and financial services companies.
Table of dates (1985–2029)
The date of Thanksgiving Day follows a 28-year cycle, broken
only by century years that are not also a multiple of 400 (2100, 2200, 2300,
2500, ...). The cycle break is an effect of the leap year algorithm, which
dictates that such years are common years as an adjustment for the
calendar-season alignment that leap years provide. Past and future dates of
celebration include:
Days after
Thanksgiving
The day after Thanksgiving is a holiday for some companies
and most schools. In the last two decades of the 20th century, it became known
as Black Friday, the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and a day for
chaotic, early-morning sales at major retailers that were closed on
Thanksgiving. A contrasting movement
known as Buy Nothing Day originated in Canada in 1992. The day after Thanksgiving is also Native
American Heritage Day, a day to pay tribute to Native Americans for their many
contributions to the United States.
Small Business Saturday, a movement promoting shopping at
smaller local establishments, takes place on the last Saturday in November, two
days after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is
a nickname given to the Monday following Thanksgiving; the day evolved in the
early days of the Internet, when consumers returning to work took advantage of
their employers' broadband Internet connections to do online shopping and
retailers began offering sales to meet the demand. Giving Tuesday takes place on the Tuesday
after Thanksgiving.
Literature
·
"A Hymn of Thanksgiving" sheet music
cover – November 26, 1899.
Poetry
·
"Thanksgiving" (1909), by Florence
Earle Coates.
·
"Over the River and Through the
Wood" (1844), by Lydia Maria Child
·
"Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986",
by William S. Burroughs in Tornado Alley.
Music
·
"A
Hymn of Thanksgiving" (1899), composed and written by Fanny J. Crosby and
Ira D. Sankey.
·
"Alice's Restaurant", a song by Arlo
Guthrie on his 1967 album Alice's Restaurant, based on a true incident in his
life that began on Thanksgiving Day, 1965.
·
"Bless This House" (1927), a song
composed and written by May Brahe and Helen Taylor.
·
"Come, Ye Thankful People, Come"
(1844), an English hymn written by Henry Alford.
·
"For the Beauty of the Earth" (1864),
an English hymn written by Folliott Sandford Pierpoint.
·
"Hold My Mule" by Shirley Caesar
(c.1980), later remixed as "You Name It" ("U Name It")
·
"Now Thank We All Our God" (c.1636), a
hymn of German origin written by Martin Rinkart.
·
"Simple Gifts" (1848), a Shaker hymn
attributed to Joseph Brackett.
·
"Thanksgiving", a song by George
Winston on his album December (1982).
"The
Thanksgiving Song", a song by Adam Sandler on his album They're All Gonna
Laugh at You! (1994).
·
"Thanksgiving Day Parade", a song by
Dan Bern on his album New American Language (2001).
·
"Thanksgiving Day", a song by Ray
Davies on his album Other People's Lives (2006).
·
"We Gather Together" (1597), a hymn of
Dutch origin written by Adrianus Valerius.
·
"We Plough the Fields and Scatter"
(1782), a hymn of German origin written by Matthias Claudius.
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