What is the origin of the Thanksgiving celebration in the US (and why is it more important than Christmas)

The fourth Thursday of November each year is a very special date for Americans of all origins.

On this date declared a holiday, they sit at the table to celebrate the Thanksgiving Day (Thanksgiving Day)sharing baked turkey, cranberry sauce, applesauce, and pumpkin pie, among other dishes.

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Custom makes those who share the meal say out loud what they are thankful for.

Thanksgiving is considered the most ecumenical day of the American calendar, since unlike Christmasbelievers of all religions feel included.

But what do people have to be thankful for?

three day banquet

Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the US (Getty Images).

The date recalls the first harvest harvested by the first British pilgrims in 1621, after a harsh winter, and the three-day banquet they shared with the Wampanoag nativesof the current state of Massachusetts, in the northeast of the United States.

“Giving thanks for the creator’s gifts had always been part of the life of the Wampaonag,” the museum says on its website. Plimoth Plantationin Massachusetts, dedicated to one of the first British colonies in America.

The official birth of Thanksgiving as a holiday is the decision made by the Republican president Abraham Lincoln in October 1863, in the midst of the Civil War (1861-1865) that pitted the confederate states, supporters of slavery, against the states of the Union, contrary to it.

President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving official in 1863. (Getty Images)

The ruler ordered to celebrate Thanksgiving after a campaign by the poet and editor Sarah Josepha Halewho had read about the banquet of the settlers and the natives of 1621, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

According to the newspaper the washington post, Lincoln took what had been a scattered holiday across the country and turned it into a national holiday, to be observed on the last Thursday of November.

Since then, almost all of the US has celebrated Thanksgiving.

Since 1970, the American Indians of New England (UAINE) decided to commemorate the National Day of Mourningto remember the mass murders, forced relocations and the theft of their lands carried out by British settlers, says the BBC in a November 2017 report.

Source: Elcomercio