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The Thanksgiving holiday's history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation. It also has aspects of a harvest festival , even though the harvest in New England occurs well before the late-November date on which the modern Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated.
Thanksgiving is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November (which became the uniform date country-wide in 1941). [2] [3] Outside the United States, it is sometimes called American Thanksgiving to distinguish it from the Canadian holiday of the same name and related celebrations in other regions.
According to the myth, the Pilgrims left England on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. [2]: 7-8 [3] Although the settlers did include the Separatists, who wanted to break away from the Church of England, other members of the community had travelled to the New World for largely financial reasons, rather than religious reasons.
Several presidents opposed days of national thanksgiving, with Thomas Jefferson openly denouncing such a proclamation. [19] That was seen as ironic because Jefferson had proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving while he was the governor of Virginia. By 1855, 16 states celebrated Thanksgiving (14 on the fourth Thursday of November, and two on the third).
Thanksgiving at Plymouth, oil on canvas by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1925, National Museum of Women in the Arts. In Protestant Christianity, a day of humiliation or fasting was a publicly proclaimed day of fasting and prayer in response to an event thought to signal God's judgement.
In August 1939, amid the Great Depression, Fred Lazarus Jr., head of Federated Department Stores (which would later become Macy's), lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving a week earlier, to the second to last Thursday of November instead of the last Thursday of November, to make the Christmas shopping season last longer and help boost retail sales.
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This page was last edited on 15 December 2024, at 22:13 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.