What is the history of Thanksgiving Day?
In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indian tribe shared an autumn harvest feast to thank local Native Americans for helping the pilgrims harvest enough food to feed their community for that winter.
The exchange of food became known as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.
It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.
At the time, it was a religious holiday - a time to give thanks to God for having a plentiful harvest, winning battles, and rain that would break droughts.
Now, for millions of Americans, it's a family holiday. But for others, it’s a day that represents the conquest and genocide of Native Americans by colonists.
A group called the United American Indians of New England established Thanksgiving as its National Day of Mourning in 1970.
Today the Day of Mourning still takes place by many Native Americans who fast on the day to commemorate the Indigenous people and ancestors killed by colonists.
What's the Thanksgiving Day Presidential Pardon?
It's a WhiteHouse tradition that dates back to 1947, when President Harry Truman received a turkey as a gift from the National Turkey Federation.
But it wasn't until the first Thanksgiving of President George H.W. Bush, in 1989, that a turkey was officially pardoned.
Since then, the president of the time has formally pardoned a turkey, sparing the animal from the Thanksgiving table.
This year, President Barack Obama has made his ‘most talked about executive action’ giving amnesty to a turkey.
The two birds, Mac and Cheese, competed for the title of National Thanksgiving Turkey, but after an intense social media campaign, Cheese was the winner.
"Alright Cheese, you are hereby pardoned from the Thanksgiving dinner table," said President Obama, adding that the bird looked "pretty happy about it."
While only one turkey could be pardoned in the Thanksgiving tradition, both birds were spared from the dinner table.
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the last Thursday of November every year.
How did having turkey on Thanksgiving become a tradition?
Although turkey wasn’t served at the first Thanksgiving dinner, historians agree that some form of wild birds were included.
Wild turkeys were plentiful; the colonist leader William Bradford noted in his diary that “there was a great store” of them.
The only surviving letter about that meal refers to four men who went “a-fowling,” which could have meant anything from ducks to swans.
Turkeys began to become increasingly popular in parts of the United States, its accessibility and fulfilling meat made it the perfect option to be the star of Thanksgiving dinner.
