The Interesting History of Thanksgiving

By Lisa Gonzalez

In elementary school we were all taught about the pilgrims who docked at Plymouth Rock, and how those pilgrims gave thanks in a celebration with the Indians. And we called it Thanksgiving.

Today's Thanksgiving is quite different from the first; our menus are filled with to die for desserts, turkey, mashed potatoes, lots of veggies, and good ole American football.

The pilgrims surely didn't celebrate with a game of football, it's doubtful that the pilgrims still had fresh veggies in the fall because they simply wouldn't keep that long, and turkey probably wasn’t the only meat on their menu.

Believable, right? Would you also believe that Thanksgiving might have been a political move to develop American customs? Possibly so!

The pilgrims who left England to be free of persecution landed in 1621 at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, but Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated nationally until hundreds of years later. Maybe it took time for the word to spread.

In 1817, the state of New York first decided to adopt "Thanksgiving" as an official holiday. Over the next 50 years every other state followed New York's lead and finally in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national holiday called Thanksgiving.

And thus the Thanksgiving tradition began in America. But then in 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the third Thursday of November instead of the last.

Congress approved the President's declaration in 1941, and for the past 65 years Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on the third Thursday in November … quite possibly the first politically correct American custom ever.

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