America celebrates Thanksgiving Day

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46309272

In pictures: America celebrates Thanksgiving Day

• 22 November 2018

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The US is marking its annual Thanksgiving Day holiday with parades and celebrations.

The day - originally a way of giving thanks for the blessings of the harvest and of the preceding year - is also being celebrated by Americans around the world.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionSinger Rita Ora performed for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, New York. She was criticised on social media after her lip-syncing appeared to drift from the music. Macy's later apologised for the "technical issues" with the sound system.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionThousands of people lined the streets in New York for the traditional annual parade, which featured a variety of large and colourful balloons, despite the low temperatures.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionIt was the coldest Thanksgiving Day in New York since 1901, the National Weather Service reported, but enthusiasm was undimmed on the streets of Manhattan.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionA strong breeze buffeted the numerous huge character balloons around, but thankfully the gusts were not severe enough for organisers to have to ground them.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionFloats from the film The Christmas Chronicles made their way along 6th Avenue during the Macy's parade, as a band marched behind them.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionMotown legend Diana Ross rode on one of the many floats.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionUS troops in Afghanistan tucked into a traditional roast turkey dinner - with all the trimmings.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionSandwiches and fruit were laid on when President Donald Trump visited members of the Coast Guard near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thanksgiving Day morning.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe families of seasonal farm workers were served a meal in the annual Thanksgiving in the Park gathering in Immokalee, Florida. Volunteers handed out food and provisions to about 1,500 people.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe holiday celebrates the Pilgrims' first harvest in what is now the state of Massachusetts. After the pilgrims left England and before they headed to America, they lived in the Dutch city of Leiden, which holds a Thanksgiving Day service at the historic Pieterskerk every year with some participants in period costume.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionOn a more sombre note, hundreds of volunteers are spending Thanksgiving combing through the ruins of homes destroyed by wildfires in California. The fires killed 83 people in and around the town of Paradise.

Image copyrightJUSTIN SULLIVAN

Image captionEvacuees of the California Camp Fire receive a Thanksgiving meal from volunteers at a makeshift evacuation camp next to a Walmart store in Chico.

Thanksgiving Day!!!

When is Thanksgiving Day and why is it celebrated?

In the US, Thanksgiving Day will be celebrated on Thursday, November 22.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ot70_45e6c

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, with its roots in a celebration of the annual harvest.When is Thanksgiving Day?

• Fourth Thursday of November. In the US, Thanksgiving Day is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of November. This year, it falls on Thursday, November 22.

• President Abraham Lincoln was the first US president to officially declare the festival as the last Thursday in November.

• The date was set in stone by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939 and approved by Congress in 1941.
• International celebration. Thanksgiving is also celebrated in Canada, Grenada, the Philippines, Saint Lucia, Liberia and the Netherlands.
• Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. 
• Black Friday. Friday after Thanksgiving kickstarts the Christmas shopping season with promotional sales. 
• The day after Thanksgiving was called "Black Friday" in a 1951 journal referring to workers calling in sick in order to have a four-day Thanksgiving weekend.

Why is it called Thanksgiving? 

• Blessing of the harvest. It began as a day where people took the opportunity of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.

• OPINION
  

  Thanksgiving: The annual genocide whitewash

  

  by Belen Fernandez
  In the US, the celebration is often recognised as an event that took place when English colonists held a feast to thank Native Americans for helping them start new lives in the US.

• "The First Thanksgiving" was celebrated after their first harvest in October 1621. The feast lasted three days.

• Five letters to five US presidents. After a long campaign, Sarah Joseph Hale, editor of Godey's Lady Book - a colonial women's magazine - is credited with making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the US.  

• In support of the proposed national holiday, Hale wrote letters to five presidents of the US. The letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of thanksgiving in 1863.

• "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritative fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution," she wrote.

• Before Thanksgiving Day, the only national holidays celebrated in the US were Washington's Birthday and Independence Day.

• National day of Mourning. From the perspective of many Native Americans, the holiday symbolises centuries of land seizure and the erosion of tribal cultures.

• The United American Indians of New England protest group accuses the US and European settlers of fabricating the Thanksgiving story, and, since 1970, the group has organised a National Day of Mourning protest on the day.

The Mashpee Wampanoag nation welcomed the Pilgrims in 1620, but they spent this Thanksgiving Eve at the U.S. Capitol protesting the loss of their land. pic.twitter.com/vP40KAWK71

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 22, 2018

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/11/thanksgiving-day-celebrate-171115142125961.html