Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Diversity News Publications

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Have you ever wonder what is Thanksgiving? and why is been celebrated? Wikipedia.org describes as follows:

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.^[1] As a federal and popular holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated to give thanksto God for guiding them safely to the New World.^[2] The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 13 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans.^[3] The feast consisted offish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild fowl (ducks, geese,swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables (peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly, wild or cultivated onion), harvest grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters:beans, dried Indian maize or corn, and squash.^[2][4][5][6] The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings”—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.^[7]

Date

Since being fixed at the fourth Thursday in November by law in 1941, the holiday in the United States can occur on any date from November 22 to November 28. When it falls on November 22 or 23, it is not the last Thursday, but the penultimate Thursday in November. As it is a Federal holiday, all United States government offices are closed and employees are paid for that day. It is also a holiday for the New York Stock Exchange and most other financial markets and financial services companies.

THANKSGIVING DATES, 2011–2021

• November 24, 2011
• November 22, 2012
• November 28, 2013
• November 27, 2014
• November 26, 2015
• November 24, 2016
• November 23, 2017
• November 22, 2018
• November 28, 2019
• November 26, 2020
• November 25, 2021

DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

The day after Thanksgiving is a day off for some companies and many schools. It is popularly known as Black Friday, because of the heavy shopping that day helps put retailers’ books back into black. Black Friday has been considered by retailers to be the start of the Christmas shopping season since as early as the 1930s.

Source: Wikipedia
Photos credit to: Wikipedia & Diversity News Publications