Credit: © Drazen Zigic, Shutterstock

Cans of cranberries are piled high on grocery store shelves. The smells of pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg float through the house. The sound of snapping green beans fills the air. It’s nearly Thanksgiving Day in the United States, the day set aside each year for giving thanks and remembering the blessings of life. People may celebrate the day with family gatherings, feasting, and prayer. For many people, Thanksgiving calls forth memories of tables crowded with food, happy reunions, football games, and religious contemplation.

But Thanksgiving Day—like so many holidays in 2020—might look different than in years past. In many places, efforts are being made to prevent the spread of the pandemic (global outbreak) of COVID-19. Such methods often include social distancing, meant to limit contact among people and thus the spread of germs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has even advised Americans to avoid Thanksgiving travel and gatherings with relatives outside their household. That means that people might not see loved ones in person or crowd holiday tables this Thanksgiving Day. But, limiting the spread of germs does not mean you can’t have a day of thanks—and delicious foods. Just as you follow a recipe for your favorite Thanksgiving dish, follow these recipes for a safer Thanksgiving Day.

Gathering with people in your household is the safest way to celebrate the holiday. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the company of friends and distant relatives. Plan a video chat to share details of your meal, catch up with loved ones, and talk about the things you are thankful for.

If you must visit friends or relatives, it may help to wash your hands or use hand sanitizer before and after greeting others. Food tastes better with clean hands anyway. You want delicious butter on your warm roll—not yucky germs! When not eating, it may help to wear a protective face mask. Plus, a face mask is a great way to hide yawning. (Roasted turkey, a popular holiday dish, has a chemical called tryptophan that is said to cause drowsiness.)

One way to practice social distancing at a holiday gathering is to seat one household per table. This means that you can sit with anyone who lives in your house. So, your seatmates might include your parents, brothers and sisters, and any grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that live in your home. Then, seat people from other households about 10 feet (3 meters) away. Before sitting down, disinfect your table and chairs. To pour on some additional safety—like you might pour on the gravy—bring your own drinks, plates, cups, and utensils.

We at World Book are thankful for our readers. We are also thankful to all the doctors, nurses, delivery drivers, and grocery store workers working to keep us safe and healthy. However you choose to celebrate, we hope you have a safe and fun Thanksgiving!

November 21, 2018

Tomorrow, November 22, is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a day set aside each year for giving thanks and remembering the blessings of life. To celebrate the holiday and honor Native American Heritage Month, we look at the Wampanoag Indians of southeastern Massachusetts, the tribe with whom the English Pilgrims shared the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Wampanoag Indians joined the recently arrived Pilgrims for a Thanksgiving feast in 1621. Credit: An oil painting on canvas (about 1919) by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (Corbis/Bettmann)

The Wampanoag traditionally lived by farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods. They were loosely organized into groups headed by leaders called sachems. However, no single sachem held authority over all the Wampanoag. The Wampanoag originally spoke an Algonquian language that is now extinct.

Credit: © Native American Heritage Month

Contact with Europeans beginning in the early 1600’s created terrible hardships for the Wampanoag. Smallpox, measles, and other European diseases killed many Indians. Other Indians were kidnapped and sold into slavery.

In 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony along Cape Cod Bay. Massasoit, a Wampanoag sachem, made a treaty with the Pilgrims in 1621.  Massasoit agreed that his people would not harm the Pilgrims as long as he lived. In return, the Pilgrims promised to protect the Indians and respect their rights. In the autumn of 1621, the Wampanoag celebrated a successful harvest with the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving. But the friendly relations did not last.

A statue of Massasoit by the American sculptor Cyrus Dallin stands on a Pilgrim burial ground in Plymouth, Mass.
Credit: Bronze statue (1921); Artstreet

When Massasoit died, his elder son, Wamsutta—whom the Europeans called Alexander—succeeded him as sachem. Massasoit’s younger son, Metacom, later succeeded Wamsutta. Europeans referred to Metacom as King Philip, believing he ruled over all the Wampanoag. Metacom grew concerned that as their demand for land increased, the settlers would eventually destroy his people. He began preparations to drive out all the Europeans in New England. The violent conflict, known as King Philip’s War, began in 1675. After several battles, the settlers defeated Metacom’s forces at Mount Hope—near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island—on Aug. 12, 1676. The settlers hunted down Metacom and killed him in a nearby swamp.

Following the war, the Wampanoag lost most of their traditional lands to European settlers. Many Wampanoag adopted Christianity and other customs of the settlers. However, they never lost their sense of identity.

Today, about 3,000 Wampanoag live in the United States. They live mainly in southeastern Massachusetts, where they are organized into five bands: (1) Assonet, (2) Gay Head or Aquinnah, (3) Herring Pond, (4) Mashpee, and (5) Namasket. In the 1970’s, the Wampanoag formed a tribal council to represent the interests of the tribe. The council helped the Gay Head band of the Wampanoag obtain federal recognition in 1987. The Mashpee band became federally recognized in 2007.

November 23, 2017

In the United States, today is Thanksgiving, an annual holiday for giving thanks and remembering the blessings of life. Among the many Thanksgiving staples—family dinners, football games, shopping, and traveling—one tradition stands out and often marks the holiday as a transition to the Christmas season: the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Such parades take place in cities across the country, and they are usually punctuated with an appearance by Santa Claus, who—according to most sources—was nowhere near the Plymouth Colony in 1621.

Giant balloons—such as these of Tom Turkey, Kermit the Frog, and Charlie Brown—are favorite attractions of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Credit: © Lev Radin, Shutterstock

The most famous of these events is Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Macy’s, a famous department store, has sponsored the “world’s largest parade” since 1924. That year, Macy’s employees attracted shoppers by marching in outlandish costumes to the flagship store on 34th Street. The march was jazzed up with floats, bands, and animals from the Central Park Zoo. The parade’s end featured Santa Claus waving to kids from the balcony above the Macy’s entrance. A popular and profitable success, the parade was repeated and has since grown to immense sizes. The parade regularly draws more than 3 million people, and it is also broadcast nationally on television. Highlights of the parade include the famous giant balloons representing such pop culture favorites as Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and Superman.

Store owners in other cities have been similarly inspired to draw attention to their businesses on Thanksgiving Day. Philadelphia’s annual parade, which dates from 1920, was sponsored by Gimbels Brothers for decades. (Gimbels was once the largest department store chain in the country.) In Detroit, the Thanksgiving Day Parade was started in 1924 by Hudson’s (also a former department store giant). The city of Chicago started its large Thanksgiving Day Parade to boost the Great Depression-era economy in 1934. (It was originally called the Christmas Caravan.) Houston’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1949, when Santa first rode his sleigh through the snowless streets to Foley’s department store. The Thanksgiving Parade in Plymouth, Massachusetts, claims to be “America’s only historically accurate chronological parade.” No date, accurate or otherwise, is given for Santa Claus’s float bringing up the rear.

November 25, 2016

Today, Friday, November 25, is “Black Friday,” a day of shopping mania and early retail sales that follows the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. The day after Thanksgiving (which most people have off work and school, creating an extra-long weekend) has long been the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season. This special shopping day first earned the name “Black Friday” in 1961, when the term was used to warn people of traffic delays and the general mayhem associated with people rushing to secure shopping deals. Since then, the chaos has generally increased, resulting in occasional stampedes and chaos and even fights as people struggle to cash-in on “limited-time” savings.

Shoppers rush to grab deals in a store in the early hours of Black Friday in Laramie, Wyoming. Credit: Powhusku (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

For decades, the standard Black Friday opening time was 6 a.m., but those hours gradually crept backward, finally hitting midnight in the 2000’s. Many large retailers then gave up and just opened on Thanksgiving, angering many employees and even warding off some shoppers. In recent years, however, things have quieted somewhat, with many stores running Black Friday sales for several days, even weeks, and with a large percentage of people turning to the Internet to make purchases online. This large increase in e-commerce has created its own special shopping extravaganza, the Monday after Black Friday, which is commonly called “Cyber Monday.”

Shoppers camp out in Germantown, Maryland, to ensure they are first in line for Black Friday deals on Nov. 26, 2010. Credit: © K2 images/Shutterstock

Today, most people associate Black Friday with manic shopping, but other uses of the term are much more serious. “Black Friday” sometimes refers to Good Friday or Friday the 13^th, but most Black Fridays mark days of particular violence, unrest, or economic upheaval, such as battles, disasters, financial emergencies, massacres, riots, or scandals. Perhaps the most famous “Black” day of all, however, was not a Friday at all, but rather a Tuesday. On Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, the stock market crashed and thousands of people lost huge sums of money. Black Tuesday is often tabbed as the beginning of the Great Depression.

November 24, 2016

In the United States, today, Thursday, November 24, is the annual holiday of Thanksgiving, a day for giving thanks and remembering the blessings of life. Across the country, families and friends gather together for dinners, good company, and—quite often—football games. The traditional centerpiece of a Thanksgiving dinner is a plump turkey cooked in the oven, on the grill, or even in a deep fryer. Many Americans take the table presence of this North American bird for granted. But have you ever wondered how it was that turkey became Thanksgiving’s traditional meal? There’s not one easy answer, but a few things led to the creation of “Turkey Day.”

President John F. Kennedy is presented with a Thanksgiving turkey in the Rose Garden of the White House on November 19, 1963. Kennedy pardoned the turkey, stating, “Let’s keep him going.” Credit: National Archives

Naturally, there are no menus around from that “first” Thanksgiving held by American Indians and the Plymouth Colony Pilgrims in 1621. We can guess, however, that early Thanksgiving foods may have included turkey as well as duck and venison (all plentiful in New England), along with traditional Native American foods such as nasaump (corn porridge) and a pumpkin dish called pompion.

Many communities, particularly in New England, began celebrating Thanksgiving in the 1700’s, and turkey was often the main course at the holiday dinner. In 1784, American patriot Benjamin Franklin suggested that the turkey—a “bird of courage”—was a more fitting national bird than the bald eagle. In the late 1790′s, another American patriot, Alexander Hamilton, supposedly said, “No citizen of the U.S. shall refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day.”

Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863, when magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale persuaded President Abraham Lincoln of the holiday’s importance—particularly during the tough years of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Hale’s powers of persuasion also led to Thanksgiving tables weighted down by stuffed turkey. She described the dish as the “belle of the ball” and included recipes in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. In the following years, turkey became established as a Thanksgiving staple.

Because of their size, turkeys yield a large amount of meat per bird. So, large gatherings such as Thanksgiving are tailor-made for roast turkey. Chickens are too small for that, and chickens also provide valuable eggs. When was the last time you had turkey eggs for breakfast? And turkeys, particularly in their native North America, are relatively plentiful, whether in the wild or on a farm. Turkey dinners are also considered “appropriate” for special occasions (beef or pork often are not), which is why turkey is often the main course at Christmas, too. Flocks of turkeys were once driven to markets, often over long distances, like cattle herds. Many turkeys, then, simply walked to Thanksgiving dinner unaware they were to be the main course.

Each Thanksgiving since 1947, a live turkey or two has been presented to the president of the United States by the National Turkey Federation, a trade group representing the turkey industry. In the last 30 years or so, however, most presidential turkeys have been “pardoned,” and allowed to live out their somewhat natural lives. According to the White House Historical Association, in 1963, just days before he was assassinated, President John F. Kennedy became the first to pardon a presidential turkey.

November 27, 2013

Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day will be the 150th year the holiday has been officially celebrated in the United States. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday in November to be day of thanksgiving. Credit for the official, national holiday should go to magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, who had stumped for the holiday for years and finally persuaded Lincoln to act on her idea.

The "first" Thanksgiving was celebrated in Plymouth, in 1621. (An oil painting on canvas from about 1919, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.—Corbis/Bettmann)

Although the 1863 Thanksgiving was the first official celebration of the national holiday,  it honored the Thanksgiving the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony shared with friendly Indians in 1621.

The Pilgrims–English people who immigrated to the new world in 1620 in search of religious freedom–barely survived their first winter in what would come to be called New England. The winter was very harsh, and nearly half of them died. The next spring, the surviving Pilgrims learned–with the help of the an Indian named Tisquantum (Squanto)–how to plant such native crops as corn and pumpkin. (They also planted seeds they brought from England for such crops as wheat and barley.) In the autumn of 1621, the governor of Plymouth, William Bradford, organized a festival to give thanks for the survival of the colony and its first harvest. But, the holiday’s roots go even deeper.

The Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast stemmed from a tradition of harvest festivals held by English country folk. On Michaelmas Day (the feast day of St. Michael, September 29), country people would hold a large, communal harvest supper, giving thanks for the crops that would sustain them over the winter. And that tradition, most likely, dates back to at least the Middle Ages, if not even farther.

Additional World Book articles:

• Thanksgiving Day
• Wampanoag Indians