Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Thanksgiving in Canada falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the United States. Because of the longstanding traditions of the holiday, the celebration often extends to the weekend that falls closest to the day it is celebrated.
Thanksgiving in North America had originated from a mix of European and Native traditions. Typically in Europe, festivals were held before and after the harvest cycles to give thanks for a good harvest, and to rejoice together after much hard work with the rest of the community. At the time, Native Americans had also celebrated the end of a harvest season. When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest. Though the origins of the holiday in both Canada and the United States are similar, Americans do not typically celebrate the contributions made in Newfoundland, while Canadians do not celebrate the contributions made in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
In Canada
Main article: Thanksgiving (Canada)
The Order of Good Cheer, 1606 by Charles William Jefferys, (1925).
The origin of the first Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to the explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. Frobisher's Thanksgiving celebration was not for harvest, but in thanks for surviving the long journey from England through the perils of storms and icebergs. On his third and final voyage to these regions in 1578 Frobisher held a formal ceremony in Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island in present Day Nunavut to give thanks to God and in a service ministered by the preacher Robert Wolfall they celebrated Communion, the first ever service in these regions.[3] Years later, the tradition of a feast would continue as more settlers began to arrive to the Canadian colonies.
Oven roasted turkey
The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving can also be traced to the French settlers who came to New France with explorer Samuel de Champlain in the early 17th century, who also took to celebrating their successful harvests. The French settlers in the area typically had feasts at the end of the harvest season and continued throughout the winter season, even sharing their food with the indigenous peoples of the area. Champlain had also proposed for the creation of the Order of Good Cheer in 1606.
As many more settlers arrived in Canada, more celebrations of good harvest became common. New immigrants into the country, such as the Irish, Scottish and Germans, would also add their own traditions to the harvest celebrations. Most of the U.S. aspects of Thanksgiving (such as the turkey or what were called Guineafowls originating from Madagascar}, were incorporated when United Empire Loyalists began to flee from the United States during the American Revolution and settled in Canada.
In the United States
Main article: Thanksgiving (United States)
The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth By Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914)
In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition traces its origins to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. There is also evidence for an earlier harvest celebration on the continent by Spanish explorers in Texas at San Elizario in 1598, as well as thanksgiving feasts in the Virginia Colony. The initial thanksgiving observance at Virginia in 1619 was prompted by the colonists' leaders on the anniversary of the settlement.The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. In later years, the tradition was continued by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford who planned a thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.While initially, the Plymouth colony did not have enough food to feed half of the 102 colonists, the Wampanoag Native Americans helped the Pilgrims by providing seeds and teaching them to fish. The practice of holding an annual harvest festival like this did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.
According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.
Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941, has been an annual tradition in the United States by presidential proclamation since 1863 and by state legislation since the Founding Fathers of the United States. Historically, Thanksgiving began as a tradition of celebrating the harvest of the year.
Thanksgiving Day's origin must trace the American history the start. in 1620, famous “in May flower” the ship full load was unbearable the Britain domestic religious persecution Puritan 102 people to arrive at the Americas. in 1620 and junction's of 1621 winter, they have encountered the difficulty which imagines with difficulty, in occupies suffers hunger and cold, in the winter the past tense, lives the immigration has 50 people. By now, the good-hearted Indian had sent the daily necessity to the immigration, but also how sends for to teach them especially to hunt, to catch fish with the planter corn, the pumpkin. Under Indian's help, the immigrants have obtained the abundant harvest finally, is joyfully celebrating abundant harvest the day, according to the religious tradition custom, the immigration had stipulated thanks God's day, and decided to thank Indian's sincere help, invites them to celebrate together the holiday.
========================
翻译成中文:
感恩节的由来要一直追溯到美国历史的发端。1620年,著名的“五月花”号船满载不堪忍受英国国内宗教迫害的清教徒102人到达美洲。1620年和1621年之交的冬天,他们遇到了难以想象的困难,处在饥寒交迫之中,冬天过去时,活下来的移民只有50来人。这时,心地善良的印第安人给移民送来了生活必需品,还特地派人教他们怎样狩猎、捕鱼和种植玉米、南瓜。在印第安人的帮助下,移民们终于获得了丰收,在欢庆丰收的日子,按照宗教传统习俗,移民规定了感谢上帝的日子,并决定为感谢印第安人的真诚帮助,邀请他们一同庆祝节日。
Thanksgiving Day is the most truly American of the national Holidays in the United States and is most closely connected with the earliest history of the country.
In 1620, the settlers, or Pilgrims, they sailed to America on the May flower, seeking a place where they could have freedom of worship. After a tempestuous two-month voyage they landed at in icy November, what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.
During their first winter, over half of the settlers died of[1] starvation or epidemics. Those who survived began sowing in the first spring.
All summer long they waited for the harvests with great anxiety, knowing that their lives and the future existence of the colony depended on the coming harvest. Finally the fields produced a yield rich beyond expectations. And therefore it was decided that a day of thanksgiving to the Lord be fixed[2]. Years later, President of the United States proclaimed the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day every year. The celebration of Thanksgiving Day has been observed on that date until today.
The pattern of the Thanksgiving celebration has never changed through the years. The big family dinner is planned months ahead. On the dinner table, people will find apples, oranges, chestnuts, walnuts and grapes. There will be plum pudding, mince pie, other varieties of food and cranberry juice and squash. The best and most attractive among them are roast turkey and pumpkin pie. They have been the most traditional and favorite food on Thanksgiving Day throughout the years.
Everyone agrees the dinner must be built around roast turkey stuffed with a bread dressing[3] to absorb the tasty juices as it roasts. But as cooking varies with families and with the regions where one lives, it is not easy to get a consensus on[4] the precise kind of stuffing for the royal bird.
Thanksgiving today is, in every sense, a national annual holiday on which Americans of all faiths and backgrounds join in to express their thanks for the year' s bounty and reverently ask for continued[5] blessings.
After the europeans had first arrived at the new continent as known as America today, the Indians gave them living necessaries and tought them how to hunting, fishing and planting. In order to thank the natives, the europeans invited them to celebrate the Day of the Lord. This is the origin of the Thanksgiving Day.欧洲人已后第一次到达新大陆作为被称为“美国的今天,印第安人给他们生活必需品和教他们如何狩猎、捕鱼和种植。为了感谢”当地的土著人,欧洲人邀请他们来庆祝主的日子。这是感恩节的起源。