Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day is one of America's most beloved and distinctively national traditions — a day set aside for gratitude, family, and reflection on the blessings of American life. It draws on a tradition stretching back to the earliest days of the American experience, when settlers gave thanks for surviving the rigors of a new world, and it has grown into an annual celebration of the abundance, liberty, and community that American life makes possible.

At its heart, Thanksgiving is a day to appreciate what you have, to gather with those you love, and to give thanks — for family, for country, and for the remarkable gift of American freedom.

The most celebrated early Thanksgiving took place in the autumn of 1621 at Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, when Pilgrim settlers and Wampanoag people shared a three-day harvest celebration after a difficult first year. The Pilgrims had arrived on the *Mayflower* in 1620 and faced terrible hardship; the harvest of 1621 was a cause for genuine gratitude.

George Washington proclaimed national days of Thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War and again as president in 1789 — the first national Thanksgiving proclamation under the new Constitution. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of *Godey's Lady's Book*, campaigned for a permanent national Thanksgiving holiday for decades before Abraham Lincoln finally proclaimed it in 1863, calling Americans to give thanks for national blessings even in a time of civil war.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first held in 1924 in New York City, became one of America's most beloved holiday traditions. Congress fixed the holiday as the fourth Thursday of November in 1941.

Thanksgiving matters because gratitude is one of the great virtues of civic life. It invites Americans to pause and appreciate the blessings they enjoy — liberty, opportunity, prosperity, family, and community. It is a reminder that the American way of life, with all its abundance and freedom, is not something to be taken for granted.

Thanksgiving also matters because it is uniquely and irreducibly American. No other nation has a holiday quite like it — a day that brings Americans together across every background, region, and belief in a shared spirit of thankfulness and joy.

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with family gatherings, the traditional turkey dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie; football (the Thanksgiving game is one of the most-watched sporting events of the year); the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City; and volunteering at food banks and soup kitchens.

The holiday begins the American holiday season, and it remains one of the most widely observed days in the country. Travel on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is among the busiest of the year, as Americans cross the country to be with family.

As America marks 250 years, Thanksgiving invites the nation to reflect on the extraordinary blessings of American life — 250 years of liberty, self-government, growth, and opportunity. The tradition of national thanksgiving, practiced since George Washington's presidency, is itself one of the remarkable threads of continuity running through the American story.

In 2026, Americans will gather around tables from coast to coast with an extra reason for gratitude: the astonishing fact that the republic founded in 1776 is still standing, still free, and still growing — 250 years on.