Why is Thanksgiving in November?
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November every year. That gives many lucky American workers a 5-day holiday weekend (except for those in retail who have to work on Black Friday, of course).
We don’t actually know what days the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving, which was in fact a 3-day festival. It also was in mid-October, not November.
But on September 28, 1789, the first Federal Congress asked President George Washington to “recommend to the nation a day of thanksgiving.” So a few days later, he issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a “Day of Publick Thanksgivin.”
Presidents that followed George Washington issued Thanksgiving Proclamations as well, but the dates (and months) never stayed consistent from year to year. Finally in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made a Proclamation that Thanksgiving would be commemorated on the last Thursday of November every year.
Then, in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday (which could be either the fourth of fifth Thursday in November depending on the year) to the third Thursday of November in order to create a longer Christmas shopping season. However, several states refused to acknowledge the change. So from 1939-1941, the country was divided, and celebrated Thanksgiving on two different days.
On December 26, 1941, to end the confusion, Congress stepped in and passed a law making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November. Now the country celebrates the holiday in unison, and follows the day with the start of the Christmas shopping season.
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Who started Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is a beloved American holiday that can be attributed to the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians.
The Pilgrims were a group of men and women who sailed from England to America on the Mayflower to avoid religious suppression (find out more about who the Pilgrims were here).
Squanto — a member of the Patuxet, an extinct Native American band of the Wampanoag tribe — taught the Pilgrims how to harvest corn and fish for eel. He also served as an interpreter for them, as he had learned English while previously enslaved in England. The leader of the Wampanoag tribe, Massasoit, gave food to the Pilgrims during the first harsh winter.
The “first Thanksgiving,” as we now refer to it, was celebrated by the Pilgrims and Indians at Plymouth Plantation, where what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The original three-day Thanksgiving festival was held in honor of their first successful harvest (growing season) in the new world, and included prayers of thanks for all their blessings. Most every fall after that, the feasts continued as a religious ceremony and soon became a tradition.
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Thanksgiving Day is now observed as a federal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November every year — traditionally with a turkey feast among family and friends. Thanksgiving has been sporadically celebrated nationwide since 1789, but wasn’t declared a federal holiday by Abraham Lincoln until 1863.
So we can thank the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe for starting Thanksgiving and giving us a holiday upon which to give thanks, spend quality time with family and friends, and gorge upon turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.
