Thanksgiving

There's always something unique about each national holiday that we celebrate and the November eat-a-thon we lovingly call Thanksgiving is no different.  A horrible day if you're literally a bloated turkey, Thanksgiving is a holiday that's truly about family.  Opposed to other holidays like New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving is a day that you want to hang out with your immediate family rather than your friends or significant other.  That's because Thanksgiving revolves around the magnificent Thanksgiving dinner feast that generally involves one terrific tasting turkey, some succulent sweet gravy, and a pretty great pie, preferably of the pumpkin variety!

A holiday that's enjoyable for the kids and the grandparents, Thanksgiving is a time where new recipes are tested out, games are played, and a bit of American history is reviewed.  The story of this holiday that takes place on the fourth Thursday in November takes place some time ago: specifically the 17^th century.

Picture this.  The year is 1621: Homely Alessandro Ludovisio suddenly transforms into Gregory XV, your new pope; Gustavus Adolphus decides hey why don't I create this new city in Sweden, I'll call it Gothenburg; Spain was mourning the death of the tough but fair King Philip III; and a slice of Americana was to be born.

The previous year, a group of plucky nomads that had the same type of plucky spirit as the 2004 Boston Red Sox, which we now know as the Pilgrims did something crazy.  They traveled from the comfortable confines of Europe to come to the savage wasteland that was pre-Jeffersonian democratic America on their ship, the Mayflower, and they actually survived.  In fact, they actually prospered a little bit and this was made clear by their sweet, bountiful, and plentiful fall harvest.  With an abundance of corn, fruits, vegetables, fish packed in salt, and meats were smoke cured over fires, the Pilgrims found that they had enough food to make it through the winter.  As winter in 1621 was not a good time to grow food, the Pilgrims found that they had managed to avoid their main fear: starving during the winter.

In a festive mood, William Bradford (then Governor of the Pilgrims) decided to proclaim a day of thanksgiving in which a gigantic feast would be made and shared by all the colonists and their Native American Indians neighbors.  From this momentous occasion was born the tremendous holiday that is Thanksgiving.

Of course, the history of Thanksgiving doesn't just stop there.  Rather, it would take centuries before this holiday became recognized as an annual event.  Many people assume that the Pilgrims made this Thanksgiving feast an annual event, but alas, during their lifetime this dinner would be a one-time occasion much like Edenfest is for our generation.  Presidents like George Washington celebrated one-time Thanksgiving events but it wasn't until Abraham Lincoln made the second of his famed proclamations, the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation that officially gave Thanksgiving the national holiday status that it deserved.

Over the years, Thanksgiving has had some minor tweaks but its spirit remains the same.  In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR to the public, Frankie to his friends) changed the day of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday of November.  Through it all, Thanksgiving remains an excellent holiday where children take the day off school to eat and play games while adults get to also eat and enjoy the two NFL games that are played each year to celebrate this day.