A Question for Americans?

Question

What is thanksgiving (other than the obvious meaning in the title) i have never understood why you have a thanksgiving day that is pretty much like Christmas without the presents?

I'm not being rude or insulting the country just interested?

Answer 1

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks to the native Americans at the close of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November amd in Canada, it is celebrated on the second Monday in October. In the United Kingdom, Thanksgiving is another name for the Harvest festival, held in churches across the country on a relevant Sunday to mark the end of the local harvest, though it is not thought of as a major event (compared to Christmas or Easter) as it is in other parts of the world. This tradition was taken to North America by early settlers, where it became much more important.

Of course, now for most Americans it's just a big football watching, day off of work and start to the Christmas shopping season day.

Answer 2

If a Brit may take a shot at this...
It's a celebration held at the end of the harvest season to give thanks, traditionally to God. It's an extension of our own Harvest Festival held in churches and taken to the New World by the pilgrim fathers.
I'm afraid I tend to be a bit sniffy about the creeping Americanisation of our society. I don't see why we have to mark Halloween in the way they do, for instance. But I do rather like the idea of Thanksgiving. I wish we could put aside one day to remember all the good things in our lives. We take some things, family, health, food and drink, for granted all too easily.
Though I suspect what would happen is something along the lines of Christmas: eating too much food and watching too much T.V.

Answer 3

What they have in common is coming together with family and friends and having a big celebratory meal together. There is quite a bit of overlap in standard foods but traditional foods supposedly eaten together by the starving colonials and the Indians have a stronger emphasis for Thanksgiving: turkey & pumpkin, for example. As you noted, no gifts. Instead, people will often take time before the meal to mention some of the things they are most thankful for--and what could be more important than close family and treasured friends? It's my favorite holiday. The importance of people gathering together is shown by the fact that it is the busiest travel weekend of the year--heavier travel than Christmas.

What's different is that Thanksgiving has much more in common with a harvest festival--giving thanks for food, and also celebrates harmony between peoples who recognized their shared human needs to survive and feed their families.

Christmas is a blending of Christian religious tradition with older solstice/winter festivals, celebrating the return of the sun with the solstice and the slow climb back out of the (metaphysical and actual) dark.

Answer 4

It is just a traditional holiday celebrating the first Thanksgiving by the first settlers here in this country. They gave thanks to God for all of the bountiful harvest and God's protective hand over them. We should be doing this daily. We could opt to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas at any time of the year. Christ for instance wasn't born in December, but that's when we celebrate His birth. A lot of things about our holidays don't make sense, but it allows those that are paying attention to what God has done for us to pause and remember the sacrifice that He made for us - to give our thanks to Him, visit family and friends, and to rest from our labors. I still wonder why we have a specific holiday for Martin Luther King and then lump all of our presidents together for one day. At any rate, you are right about Thanksgiving and Christmas being similar - commercialization of the holidays is out of hand. Stores barely remember Thanksgiving - they go from Halloween to Christmas - it is sort of frightful and disgusting even to me. I hope that most Americans do not lose sight of the real reason for these two main holidays. Thank you for your interest - it gave me a chance to reflect on earlier times when the holidays meant so much more.

Answer 5

There was this woman way back in the 1800s who began petioning president Lincoln to make this a federal holiday. I don't remember her specific reason behind it but it did take decades for Thanksgiving to be declared a national holiday.I saw the history of Thanksgiving on the History channel last year. So if you getr the History channel over there I'm sure they'll repeat it if your interested.

Answer 6

It is the last Thursday of November. The purpose is to get family together on Thursday and shop for Christmas presents on Friday. Friday after Thanksgiving is the biggest volume of shopping all year.

Answer 7

I am so sorry for all of the Americans who have answered this question on here who obviously have no idea what Thankgiving is about. I don't know where they went to school, but their education is greatly lacking in this regard. Thanksgiving is the day set aside to give thanks to God for His providence and care over the past year. The Pilgrims had a very rough first year with much sickness and little food. At the end of the fall harvest, they had a meal and invited the natives who had helped them survive the year to join them. They gave thanks to God for His care. Thanksgiving Day has been set aside by our government as a national holiday for people to reflect and give thanks to God for His blessings. It is not to thank your neighbor, or the natives, or anyone else. It is for thanking God.

Answer 8

It signifies the day the Pilgrims and Indians sat down as friends, ate a meal together and gave thanks for the things they had.




To all those who say we don't know what Thanksgiving is - find a history textbook. If it didn't happen that way, every single last school, principal and teacher needs to know about it!!!!!!

..... of course from people that are not American....

Answer 9

Traditionally a day to give thanks for all that we have been blessed with throughout the year. Originally was celebrated by the first settlers on the continent as a way of being thankful they made through the Fall harvest. Times were rough then and they were thrilled to be alive.

The attitude and timbre of the day is much different than Christmas.

Answer 10

It is to commemorate a feast the early settlers of our country allegedly had when they had been starving and the native Americans came and gave them food and helped them survive.

It was not actually a holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it one in 1863.

Although it is now tied to an event in American history, it really was a continuation of annual Fall harvest festivals that were a tradition brought here by European settlers.