The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621.The colonists celebrated it as a traditional English harvest feast, to which they invited the local Wampanoag Indians with out who's helped they would have starved.
George Washington was the first president to declare the holiday, in 1789.
In 1863 a Abraham Lincoln, searching for a way to unite the nation issued a proclamation declaring the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving.
Starting in 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, seeking to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, proclaimed Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November. Controversy followed, and Congress passed a joint resolution in 1941 decreeing that Thanksgiving should fall on the fourth Thursday of November, where it remains.
In 2008 every politician and media commentator wants you to go out and spend. If you do spend wisely. This holiday should not be about the materialistic binge it has become.
Be thankful for and enjoy your family and friends, they are what it's about.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
7 comments:
Or be thankful for what you have right now. I'm thankful I have a job, a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food in my stomach. Simple things in life sometimes are the best.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Kate: yes, they are.
Mariposa: I hope you enjoy yours
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Heather: Quite the fine time, thank you.
Hope your holiday was at least as good a time as mine was.
I sent out a text message: Happy Native American "bad decision making" day
;-)
Gadfly: Had they kill them all, before the pox killed the native Americans, the world might be a very different place
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