Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks, traditionally to God, for the things one has at the end of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. In Canada, thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Traditional celebration

In the united states, certain kinds of food are traditionally served at Thanksgiving meals. First and foremost, turkey is usually the featured item on any Thanksgiving feast table (so much so that Thanksgiving is sometimes referred to as Turkey Day). Stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, Indian corn, other fall vegetables, and pumpkin pie are commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner. All of these primary dishes are actually native to the Americas or were introduced as a new food source to the Europeans when they arrived.

History of Thanksgiving in the United States.

The Virginia colony

A collective prayer of thanksgiving was held in the Virginia Colony on December 4.1619 near the current site of Berkeley Plantation, where celebrations are still held each year in November.

Pilgrims

The Pilgrims were particularly thankful to the Squanto, the Native American who taught them how to catch eel, grow corn and who severed as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English as a slave in Europe). Without Squanto's help the Pilgrims might not have survived in the new world. The explorers who later came to be called the Pilgrims set apart a day to celebrate at Plymouth immediately after their first harvest, in 1621. at the time, this was not regarded as a Thanksgiving observance; harvest festivals were existing parts of English and Wampanoag tradition alike.