Thanksgiving is a holiday with interesting traditions that come along with it. 

The first Thanksgiving is believed to happen in 1621 where the people shared a three day feast. This is known as the first Thanksgiving, at this time though it was not called Thanksgiving.  

Another fun fact is that in 1939, President D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up a week so shoppers would have a longer time to get their holiday shopping done. This decision was very controversial, and not many people agreed with this. In 1941 the Congress set Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of the month, and this is where it is today. 

For a while Thanksgiving wasn’t an actual holiday. It wasn’t until 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a holiday. He made Thanksgiving a holiday during the Civil War, by doing this he wanted to give thanks after the deadly battles. He thought that this would bring peace after all the violence and rough times people had gone through. 

Today we often think of turkey when we think of Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t always that way. People would eat foods like seafood, and various fruits and vegetables. The tradition of eating turkey didn’t become popular till the Nineteenth Century. 

Thanksgiving is a holiday that is mostly celebrated in just America and Canada. Other countries also celebrate something along the same lines of Thanksgiving, where they still give thanks for everything they are grateful for. In Brazil they celebrate Dia de Ação de Graças. This is an unofficial holiday in Brazil but they are still celebrating, giving thanks, and eating good foods.

We often eat a lot of food on Thanksgiving. Lots of families even have a couple of Thanksgivings that they go to in one day. The average calories consumed on Thanksgiving is four thousand five hundred. The tradition with football on Thanksgiving all began in 1876 with a game played between Yale and Princeton. The first NFL game played on Thanksgiving didn’t happen till 1920. 

As we can see there is a lot more to Thanksgiving than just Turkey and food — filled with its own delicious history.