Thanksgiving SVG Day is a North American holiday, celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the USA. The festive season begins on this day, which includes Christmas and lasts until New Year’s Eve.
Thanksgiving SVG History
Thanksgiving was originally a celebration of gratitude and appreciation to God, as well as to family and friends for their material well-being and good attitude. In the U.S. and Canada, the holiday has lost much of its religious significance and has become a civil, common and popular holiday.
The roots of the holiday go back to American history, to the very first English settlers who arrived on the shores of America in 1620 on the now famous ship “Mayflower”. They boarded after a rough storm ocean voyage in the present Massachusetts on a frosty November day and founded the Plymouth Colony.
More than half of the approximately one hundred people who arrived could not survive the harsh winter and died of cold, hunger and disease. The survivors also established the colony in the spring with the help of the local Indians, especially Squanto, who taught them what crops to grow and how to grow on this inhospitable rocky soil. The unexpectedly rich harvest was a reward for their efforts. The first governor of the colonists, W. Bradford, proposed a day of thanksgiving. In the autumn of 1621, the pilgrims’ fathers invited the chief and another 90 Indians of the tribe, who helped them to survive in unfamiliar conditions. This meal, shared with the Indians, was the first Thanksgiving celebration. Subsequently, the colonists celebrated a good harvest with occasional Thanksgiving festivals.
After the conquest of independence and the emergence of a single U.S. state, the first president of the country, J. Washington, proposed to celebrate Thanksgiving as a national holiday every year on November 26.
In 1864, at the end of the Civil War, A. Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November each year as Thanksgiving. In 1939, F.D. Roosevelt replaced this date with the penultimate Thursday of November, but his declaration was not binding. This caused a split among the states, with 23 states celebrating Thanksgiving on the penultimate Thursday and 22 on the last. The other states (e.g., Texas) declared both days festive.
In 1941, the U.S. Congress adopted a bill requiring Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. On December 26, 1941, Roosevelt signed the bill, thus establishing the current scheme.
Thanksgiving SVG Celebration traditions
According to the ancient tradition, several generations of one family gather in the house of their elders for a festive lunch. Everyone says thank you for all the good things that have happened in his life. Today’s Americans eat what their ancestors ate in 1621 at their first Thanksgiving dinner.
Many dishes have become not only a tradition, but also a kind of holiday symbol: stuffed turkey with cranberry syrup and a large sweet pumpkin pie. Bright young pumpkins, cobs of “Indian” corn, apples, oranges, chestnuts, nuts, dried leaves and bunches of grapes hanging from a dish like a horn of plenty, not only serve as a traditional decoration of the table, but also represent the abundance of autumn gifts of nature. Bouquets of golden, orange and red-brown chrysanthemums, supplemented with twigs and berries, complete the feeling of abundance and generosity of nature, a real feast of a rich harvest.
New York’s Macy’s Parade, a mass march organized by Macy’s retail chain since 1927, takes place. Its main attraction is the hugely sized inflatable toys (cartoon, fairy tale and television characters) that run from Central Park to the entrance to the department store, across from Herald Square (between Sixth Avenue and Broadway). On the eve of the parade there is a ceremony of inflating toys. The parade is shown live on TV.
On the day following Thanksgiving, called Black Friday, Christmas sales begin in shops and on the internet. Children also make toys in the form of turkeys made of various improvised materials: cones, sticks and so on.
Thanksgiving SVG in Canada
Like Canadians in the United States, on Thanksgiving Day Canadians also bake turkeys and ask God to send down the welfare of their country. Canadians also make apple pie and dumplings filled with turkey on that day.