What Thanksgiving Is All About

Khrista Cendana

8 years ago

Thanksgiving Day is a day to celebrate with family and friends. It is also a day where we should be grateful for what we have. It is a holiday where loved ones are together at the table and are enjoying a wonderful feast. Here are more facts and history on how Thanksgiving started.

People:

According to the website: www.christiananswers.net, “Abraham Lincoln….proclaimed an annual national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelleth in the heavens…”

Sarah Josepha Hale – petitioned several presidents to make Thanksgiving an annual event. In 1863,Hale convinced President Lincoln that a national Thanksgiving might serve to unite a war-torn country.

The Continental Congress proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving in 1777. By the 1850s, almost every state and territory celebrated Thanksgiving.

Facts:

Today’s national Thanksgiving celebrates a blend of two traditions: the New England custom and the Puritan Thanksgiving.

Many people around the United States celebrate Thanksgiving more than Christmas.

Food:

Turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and root vegetables are based on the New England fall harvest. Local cooks modified the menu by choice and by necessity when the holiday spread across the country by the ninetieth century.

Nowadays not all people celebrate Thanksgiving, but almost everyone does celebrate. The main dish can be ham, turkey, tofu turkey, or it could be all three! It is still the same as before on how one will celebrate Thanksgiving.

You can be in New Zealand having a Skype call with the rest of your family down in California while having a Thanksgiving meal by yourself or friends. No matter where you are, you are grateful that you have family and friends by your side.

Kids nowadays will only know the parades that are being shown on television for Thanksgiving or it is just time to spend with cousins and friends. Parents has to tell the kids in some sort of aspect on what Thanksgiving is all about, even if they did learned it in school.

Even before Thanksgiving, parents can ask questions to their children:

Who are you grateful for?
What does Thanksgiving mean to you?
What will you be doing on Thanksgiving?
What was your favorite food on Thanksgiving?

These are questions that kids could possibly understand what Thanksgiving may be about. Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be hard to explain it to anyone, as long as he/she has the general idea of what Thanksgiving may be about. It could be fun and simple for the parent to bond with their kids on the holiday and hopefully they’ll understand.

Everyone knows that during the first Thanksgiving, Pilgrims and the Indians were eating together. The Indians were ancestoral members of the Wampanoag Nation. However, the version of Wampanoag was that Abraham Lincoln made everything up. It was during the Civil War era and he wanted to make peace and unity among everyone. There’s another version of the meal from the Mashpee. A group of people from the boat came out to hunt; they met the Natives nearby, and that is how it happened with the story of Squanto and Captain John Smith.

In conclusion, Thanksgiving is celebrated all around the world. In the past it was really a tradition in most places; people used their own traditions. In modern times, it has changed and people use different menus on their table for Thanksgiving. Everywhere Thanksgiving is celebrated, no matter where you are, you are with friends or family. Kids understand what Thanksgiving may be about. So yes, I believe that Thanksgiving is celebrated more than Christmas and that Thanksgiving brings us closer to each other rather you’re related by blood or not. There’s many versions of what may happened during that day back on the first Thanksgiving. Whatever version is true, everyone knows in the end that we come together and celebrate once a year for unity and peace.

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