Thanksgiving Day Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated

in the United States as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.

History:

In 1620 a group of people left the south coasta of England to live in America. They arrive in November, and many of them died during that first winter. The local tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, taught these Europeans how to plant corn and catch the local fish.

As a result, the following autumn the settlers had collected enough food to survive the winter. As a thank you, the Europeans invited the native Americans to a feast wich lasted three days.

National Day of Celebration

The early European Americans were a religious people and many had feasts in the autumn to give thanks that they had enough to eat, but it wasn't until hundreds of year later that Thanksgiving became a national celebration.

A writer called Sarah Josepha Hale spent 30 years trying to get the government to create a national day of celebration. Finally, in 1863, President Licoln agreed.

BLACK FRIDAY

The day after Thanksgiving has marked the start of Christmas shopping with stores reducing their prices sometimes by over 50%. Many peolpe have the day off work, shops open early and peolpe often queue for hours to get the best bargains.

Billions of dollars are spent on Black Friday.

Thanksgiving Day Parade In the 1960s one of New York’s most famous

department stores began a parade through the streets of the city to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Now the parade is famous for its enormous ballons depicting favorite children’s characters.

What to eat on Thanksgiving: