hanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks to the native Americans at the close of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, and in Canada it is celebrated on the second Monday in October. In the United Kingdom, Thanksgiving is another name for the Harvest festival, held in churches across the country on a relevant Sunday to mark the end of the local harvest, though it is not thought of as a major event (compared to Christmas or Easter) as it is in other parts of the world. This tradition was taken to North America by early settlers, where it became much more important.
United States
In the United States, certain kinds of food are traditionally served at Thanksgiving meals. First and foremost, Domesticated turkey is usually the featured item on any Thanksgiving feast table (so much so that Thanksgiving is sometimes referred to as “Turkey Day”). Stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, Indian corn and other fall vegetables, and pumpkin pie are also commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner.
On Thanksgiving Day, families and friends usually gather for a large meal or dinner. This results in Thanksgiving holiday weekend being one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
In New York City, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held annually every Thanksgiving Day in Midtown Manhattan. The parade features moving stands (also known as "floats") with specific themes, scenes from Broadway plays, large balloons of cartoon characters and TV personalities, and high school marching bands. The float that traditionally ends the Macy's Parade is the Santa Claus float. This float is a sign that the Christmas season has begun. Thanksgiving parades also occur in many cities such as Plymouth, Houston, Philadelphia (which claims the oldest parade), and Detroit (where it is the only major parade of the year). Within the New York metropolitan area, the city of Stamford, Connecticut holds an alternative parade to the Macy's parade (with different characters on the balloons) the Sunday before Thanksgiving that has attracted over 250,000 people in recent years. Because of the earlier date, Santa Claus parades in Canada do not fall on Thanksgiving; the only major parade on that day in Canada is the Oktoberfest parade in Kitchener-Waterloo.
The American winter holiday season (generally the Christmas shopping season in the U.S.) traditionally begins when Thanksgiving ends, on "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving); this tradition has held forth since at least the 1930s. While the biggest day of shopping of the year in the U.S., as measured by customer traffic, is still the Friday after Thanksgiving (the biggest by sales volume is either the Saturday before Christmas or December 23), most shops start to stock for and promote the December holidays immediately after Halloween, and sometimes even before. The Friday after Thanksgiving is also known as Buy Nothing Day, where protesters do not purchase anything to protest the wasteful consumption habits of First World countries.
is often a major part of Thanksgiving celebrations in the U.S. and likewise Canadian football in Canada. Professional games are traditionally played on Thanksgiving Day in both countries; until recently in the U.S., these were the only games played during the week apart from Sunday or Monday night. In Canada, these are the only games played on a Monday except for the Labour Day classic, and on the Civic Holiday. In America, the tradition is referred to as the Thanksgiving Classic. The Detroit Lions of the American National Football League have hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day since 1934, with the exception of 1939–1944 (due to World War II). The Dallas Cowboys have hosted every Thanksgiving Day since 1966, with the exception of 1975 and 1977 when the then-St. Louis Cardinals hosted. The Kansas City Chiefs hosted games during their days in the American Football League, and will revive that tradition in 2006 when they host the Denver Broncos on Thanksgiving. Additionally, many college and high school football games are played over Thanksgiving weekend, often between regional or historic rivals.
U.S. tradition associates the holiday with a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This element continues in modern times with the Thanksgiving dinner, often featuring turkey, playing a large role in the celebration of Thanksgiving. Some of the details of the American Thanksgiving story are myths that developed in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of the effort to forge a common national identity in the aftermath of the Civil War and in the melting pot of new immigrants.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving