¿Por qué se celebra Thanksgiving en Estados Unidos? Origen y significado del Día de Acción de Gracias

This is what happened on the first Thanksgiving: the real reason why we celebrate it

Por Daniela Barrera – X Dann_arvz – Este 28 de noviembre, millones se reunirán para celebrar Thanksgiving en Estados Unidos, pero ¿por qué se festeja? Conoce su origen y significado.

Este 28 de noviembre, Estados Unidos conmemora una de sus festividades más longevas y esperadas: el Día de Acción de Gracias, también conocido como Thanksgiving en inglés.

A través de esta celebración, millones de familias y amigos se reúnen para ofrecer una tradicional cena, misma que consiste en un típico pavo con gravy, por lo regular, acompañado de un puré de papa. De acuerdo con la tradición, poco antes de la cena, los presentes agradecen por todo lo que se tiene.

El Día de Acción de Gracias se celebra el último jueves de noviembre y su importancia es tan relevante como la Navidad, pues esta festividad marca el origen informal de las fiestas decembrinas. De hecho, Acción de Gracias es uno de los once días feriados federales en Estados Unidos, pero, ¿por qué se celebra Thanksgiving en USA? Te compartimos su origen y significado.

¿Por qué se celebra Thanksgiving en Estados Unidos? Conoce su origen y significado

De acuerdo con diversos historiadores, el origen del Día de Acción de Gracias data de 1621 en Plymouth, Massachusetts. En aquel entonces, los peregrinos del Nuevo Mundo celebraron las cosechas cautivadas un año antes, cuando los indios Wampanoag les enseñaron a cultivar, cazar y pescar. Gracias a ello, los peregrinos obtuvieron abundantes cosechas de grano, cebada, frijoles y calabazas.

La celebración surgió porque, durante el primer invierno, el número de los peregrinos diezmó a la mitad, por lo que el resultado abundante de las cosechas era una situación digna de celebrar, dando como resultado el primer Día de Acción de Gracias en la historia, mismo al que se conoció como el primer ‘American Thanksgiving’.

Fue en 1863 cuando el presidente Abraham Lincoln reconoció el Acción de Gracias como celebración nacional. No obstante, fue hasta 1941, cuando el 32° Presidente del país, Franklin D. Roosevelt, estableció el cuarto jueves de noviembre como el día oficial de la celebración a través de un decreto para retrasar las vacaciones una semana.

De tal modo, los estadounidenses tendrían más tiempo de realizar sus compras navideñas y, con ello, se estimularía la economía del país. Fue entonces cuando el Día de Acción de Gracias se proclamó como un día festivo para recordar la historia de los peregrinos.

más aquí https://us.as.com/actualidad/por-que-se-celebra-thanksgiving-en-estados-unidos-origen-y-significado-del-dia-de-accion-de-gracias-n/

This is what happened on the first Thanksgiving: the real reason why we celebrate it

By Greg Heilman – The iconic image that Thanksgiving conjures up is of the famous 1621 feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans, but there’s more to the story.

On November 28, millions of families around the country will celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday whose origins date back centuries. Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays in the United States where people sit down to a meal and give thanks for what they have.

The iconic image that the holiday conjures is that of the famous 1621 feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans in Plymouth, Massachusetts. While that is the symbolic start of the tradition, it wouldn’t become an official holiday until over two centuries later.

The origins of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has its roots in older traditions from Europe of celebrations for the end of conflict, arriving safely to a destination, and a good harvest. Such celebrations took place before the mythologized Thanksgiving of 1621 seen as the first Thanksgiving. The earliest one recorded between Native Americans and Europeans took place in modern day Florida back in 1565 between Spanish explorers and the local Timucua.

But the one we imagine and has become part of our folklore took place in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. On that occasion the Pilgrims who had set out for the New World a year earlier were celebrating having had a successful harvest after the hardships of their voyage and the first winter in their new home had decimated their numbers by half. The Wampanoag, the tribe living in the area where the pilgrims arrived, supported the newly established community, after seeing them struggle to grow crops in an environment unfamiliar to them. After the first productive harvest was collected, the pilgrams and members of the Wampanoag came together, a short lived peace that would turn bloody in the coming decades.

In early American history, Thanksgiving feasts were also held after major victories in battle. The first “national” Thanksgiving was proclaimed by George Washington after the Americans’ victory over the British at the battle of Saratoga, celebrated on 18 December, 1777.

A nation in turmoil needs to be brought together

For many years the Thanksgiving celebration was a regional affair with celebrations proclaimed by local or state governments and sometimes a presidential decree. The division between North and South pre-civil war was also present with regards to Thanksgiving with the concept relatively foreign in the South. At this time the US was expanding rapidly to the west and tension over whether or not the new lands would allow slavery were dividing the nation in two.

Sarah Josepha Hale, or the “Mother of Thanksgiving”, who began a letter writing campaign in 1846 to government officials both at the state and national level to push for a national Thanksgiving holiday. For 17 years she sent letters until the US found itself in the grip of the Civil War and a president looking for a way to bring the nation together took up her cause. Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed that the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” However, it would not be until the Reconstruction era that Thanksgiving gained popularity as a national holiday celebrated by communities and families across the ever expanding American territory.

The modern Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in modern times is not as religious a day as it was in the past. Thanksgiving today is the start of the Christmas shopping season, at least it used to be although the start seems to be creeping up ever earlier. In 1939 during the Great Depression, Thanksgiving was set to fall on 30 November which would have left only 24 days until Christmas. Additionally, the notion of a holiday that is based on gratitude makes it accessible to people of different faiths and cultures. Though there are typical Thanksgiving dishes, the recipes used and additions to the table represent the diversity of the country.

Then President Franklin D Roosevelt in an effort to stimulate the economy moved the holiday up a week to give people more time to shop. It did not go over well, with critics calling it “Franksgiving.” After some wrangling Congress set the date to always be the fourth Thursday of November in 1941. 

Today we associate Thanksgiving with getting together with family, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and football. It is one of the few days we actually get to kick back and relax (if you’re not in the kitchen), eat too much turkey (and for weeks afterwards) and then fall asleep on the sofa watching football.

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