DCHP-3

American Thanksgiving

DCHP-2 (May 2016)
n.

the federal holiday of Thanksgiving in the US.

Type: 1. Origin — Thanksgiving is celebrated in both Canada and the US. In Canada, the celebration draws from three traditions: European harvest traditions, Martin Frobisher's 1578 Thanksgiving in the Eastern Arctic, which is the first North American celebration by that name, and the 1621 Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims on occasion of their first harvest. Frobisher's celebration is the Canadian claim to the 'first' Thanksgiving, while Americans commonly refer to the feast celebrated by the Pilgrims as the 'first' one. The harvest celebration was brought to Canada in the 175os in Halifax, where a 1763 Thanksgiving Day was observed to celebrate the end of the Seven Years' War (Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. "Thanksgiving"). With the immigration of Loyalists at the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, traditions around Thanksgiving were brought into central and western Canada.
In the US, George Washington proclaimed 26 November 1789 as a day of Thanksgiving. Before the American Civil War, only American presidents Washington, John Adams and James Madison declared Thanksgiving to be a holiday. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving Day, and it has been celebrated since then in that country (see Library of Congress reference). Canada began to observe the holiday by individual proclamations, year after year, in 1879. In 1957, a proclamation was issued fixing Thanksgiving as a national holiday on the second Monday in October.
Although both Canadians and Americans refer to their respective holidays as "Thanksgiving", American Thanksgiving is used by Canadians to distinguish the American celebration from the Canadian one, while Canadian Thanksgiving is usually called, by default, Thanksgiving (see, e.g. the 2010 quotation), unless when dealing with Americans. In the US, the holiday is generally referred to simply as "Thanksgiving".

Quotations

1864
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR; it [sic] origin, objects and probable results: A Sermon preached on the American Thanksgiving Day, in the Congregational Church, Brantford, C. W., by the Rev. John Wood.
1886
Had our Loyalist great-grandfathers but shown a proper spirit on the sylvan shores of the Bay of Quinté, we also might have had such a heritage of association, and Canadian literature might have received at least an edible enrichment. Governor Bradford, we are told, in his observance of that earliest American Thanksgiving, "sent four men out a-fowling that they might in a more special manner rejoice together."
1898
When the present American government came in to power at Ottawa, it went a step further in Yankeeism and ordered the holding of thanksgiving day on the last Thursday in November, the date of the American Thanksgiving day.
1900
The Gore Vales will play in Detroit on the American Thanksgiving Day against the Detroit Association team.
1918
H. D. Brown, president of the Cuban-American Jockey Club, operating Oriental Park in Havana, says all arrangement have been made for another meeting of 100 days, beginning on the American Thanksgiving Day, November 28.
1937
American Thanksgiving Dinner Follows Lines of Tradition The Thanksgiving menu which is generally accepted from Maine to California is one which follows a traditional pattern. First comes some sort of appetizer. It used to be oyster stew. Now, since appetites do not need so generous a fillip the first course is apt to be chilled fruit juice of some sort, or heated or chilled tomato juice cocktail. After that comes the roast turkey with his brown glistening sides and crackling skin.
1967
Canadian Thanksgiving is a pretty ambiguous festival. It doesn't coincide with the American Thanksgiving, which comes on with great flourishes of turkeys and Pilgrim Fathers: and churches seem to have their harvest-home festivals any old time they feel like it in September.
1987
The film opens next Wednesday, one day before American Thanksgiving, the busiest U.S. travel weekend of the year, so some of the pair's misadventures should really hit home with American audiences.
1993
There is already an American Thanksgiving, but Americans love Thanksgiving so much they would probably welcome another one. When Americans have Thanksgiving everybody goes home for the holidays and the airline business booms. However, the mythology of American Thanksgiving, in which the Indians serve turkey to the Pilgrims, has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. Canadian Thanksgiving, by way of contrast, has no mythological basis at all. People just eat.
2010
Thursday marks the first day of American Thanksgiving – traditionally a four-day celebration involving chaotic travel, frenetic consumer spending, marathon eating and general forced family bonding – but Wednesday night’s TV lineup is bereft of quality programming to mark the occasion. Not that it should matter to us – we had our own Thanksgiving feast last month, thanks very much – but it's probably worth noting the glaring lack of broadcast attention now paid to the second-biggest holiday of the year south of our border.

References