THANKSGIVING

It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada.
It is essentially a harvest festival. It is a time characterized with lot of fun and frolic, gifting, family feasting, community praying... It is a time to thank not only God for a bountiful harvest, but also your fellow for their continuous support and care. 
Parades, fetes and fairs, eating at restaurants, shopping are an inherent part of the festive celebration. Football game is closely associated with thanksgiving celebration in America. Football matches are organised every year to mark the occasion. Thanksgiving weekend is also the official beginning of the Christmas season in America.

HISTORY

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. 

It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

TRADITIONAL THANKSGIVING DINNER MENU
Sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, ham or stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry, rolls of bread for the gravy, pumpkin pie...