Spotlight: Thanksgiving facts and traditions
Thanksgiving wasn’t an official holiday on the final Thursday of November until 1941.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln set aside the final Thursday in November as a national day of thanks in a proclamation.
The writer of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was one of the most influential people in trying to get Thanksgiving to be an official holiday; she tried for about 40 years and eventually led to Lincoln’s proclamation.
Minnesota, North Carolina, California, Missouri and Virginia are the states where most of the turkeys we eat on Thanksgiving are raised.
The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade took place in 1924 and featured Macy’s employees with wild animals from the Central Park Zoo.
New York was the first state to make the holiday an official custom in 1817.
The first Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims was in 1621. They were grateful that they survived the journey to America because about half of them perished.
In spite of modern day portrayals of the Pilgrims, they probably didn’t just wear black and white and buckles weren’t in fashion until later. Those Pilgrims were on top of the trends!
Sources:
http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving-facts
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm
http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/trivia.htm
Posted by Danielle Paluga
on Nov 18 2010. Filed under Features, Spotlight.
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