The United States of America (USA) is preparing for Thanksgiving Day on November 26, 2020 (Thursday). Thanksgiving takes place each year on the fourth Thursday of November and is an annual national holiday in the North American continent.
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia, and the sub-national entities Leiden, Norfolk Island, and the inhabited territories of the United States. It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.
History:
The annual feast is in honour of the “first” Thanksgivings in America, in 1619 in Virginia, and in 1621, when colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts, later known as the Pilgrims, shared a meal with the Wampanoag Indians, who were native to the land. At any rate, Thanksgiving has been held on a Thursday in November since George Washington’s presidency. Washington declared a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789, partly to honor the new U.S. Constitution.
But it was President Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed in 1863 that Thanksgiving would be held the last Thursday of November. “He’s the father of the whole idea of a nation giving thanks for its advantages and privileges of living in a democracy like this,” said Harold Holzer, historian and chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. On Dec. 26, 1941, less than a month after the attack at Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II, Congress passed a law declaring the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day, where it remains to this day.
