Happy Thanksgiving

Picture credit to Mom to Mom

It'll be a long holiday through the weekends. Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, 27th November 2008. The next day is Black Friday. And then the normal weekends. So, dear hubby will be on holiday from tomorrow till Sunday. Insya-Allah, we will be taking a trip to Utah, Salt Lake City to be exact. It will be quite a long drive, around 9++ hours maybe. So right now, I'm frying some chicken to be taken as our bekal tomorrow. The days are getting shorter nowadays, so if we want to reach there when the sun is still up, we should probably not make any stops.

Anyway, what is Thanksgiving? Normally, when we say Thanksgiving, we will straight away come up with an image of smoking roasted big fat turkey surrounded with all the yummylicious dressing in the middle of a big dining table, surrounded with big happy family. There will also be apple/pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, corn bread, green beans, etc etc etc. Those are traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Sort of like ours ketupat and lemang for Malays, rendang for Minang, burasak for Bugis, sambal goreng for Javanese, errr...now I'm a little bit carried away there...yumm..yumm.. I've been having a blasting time for the last few days watching the Food Network channel. They're having shows after shows of Thanksgiving feast. Learnt lots of recipes and cooking tips.

Thanksgiving is a traditional public holiday here in North America. Black Friday is also a public holiday. Black Friday is when all the shopping malls and factory outlets will be having their Midnight Madness sales. All prices would be slashed down to almost 80-90% of their original price. Woowwweeeee.... (Too bad dear hubby has given me that 'We've already spent too much, honey' look...huhuhuhu). Boleh la yanggggg....??!!??

Anyway, here's some info about Thanksgiving that I've Wiki'ed.

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, at the end of the harvest season, is an annual American Federal holiday to express thanks for one's material and spiritual possessions. The period from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day often is called the holiday season. Most people celebrate by gathering at home with family or friends for a holiday feast. Though the holiday's origins can be traced to harvest festivals that have been celebrated in many cultures since ancient times, the American holiday has religious undertones related to the deliverance of the English settlers by Native Americans after the brutal winter at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The first recorded Thanksgiving ceremony took place on September 8, 1565, when 600 Spanish settlers, under the leadership of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, landed at what is now St. Augustine, Florida, and immediately held a Mass of Thanksgiving for their safe delivery to the New World; there followed a feast and celebration. As the La Florida colony did become part of the United States, this can be classified as the first Thanksgiving. El Paso, Texas, has also been said to be the site of the first Thanksgiving to be held in what is now known as the United States, though that was not a harvest festival. Spaniard Don Juan de Oñate ordered his expedition party to rest and conducted a mass in celebration of thanksgiving on April 30, 1598.

Thanksgiving was originally a religious observance for all the members of the community to give thanks to God for a common purpose. Historic reasons for community thanksgivings include the 1541 thanksgiving mass after the expedition of Coronado safely crossing part of Texas and finding game, and the 1777 thanksgiving after the victory in the revolutionary battle of Saratoga. In his 1789 Proclamation, President Washington gave many noble reasons for a national Thanksgiving, including “for the civil and religious liberty,” for “useful knowledge,” and for God’s “kind care” and "his providence." The only presidents to inject a specifically Christian focus to their proclamation have been Grover Cleveland in 1896, and William McKinley in 1900. Several other presidents have cited the Judeo-Christian tradition. Gerald Ford's 1975 declaration made no clear reference to any divinity.

The tradition of giving thanks to God is continued today in various forms. Religious and spiritual organizations offer services and events on Thanksgiving themes the week-end before, the day of, or the week-end after Thanksgiving. Bishop Ryan observed about Thanksgiving Day, "It is the only day we have that consistently finds Catholics at Mass in extraordinary numbers...even though it is not a holy day of obligation."

In celebrations at home, it is a holiday tradition in many families to begin the Thanksgiving dinner by saying grace. Found in diverse religious traditions, grace is a prayer before or after a meal to express appreciation to God, to ask for God’s blessing, or in some philosophies, to express an altruistic wish or dedication. The custom is portrayed in the photograph “Family Holding Hands and Praying Before a Thanksgiving Meal.” The grace may be led by the hostess or host, as has been traditional, or, in contemporary fashion, each person may contribute words of blessing or thanks. On Thanksgiving Day, families and friends usually gather for a large meal or dinner, the result being that the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the busiest travel periods of the year. In the United States, Thanksgiving is a four-day or five-day weekend vacation in school and college calendars. Most business and government workers (78% in 2007) are also given both Thanksgiving and the day after as paid holidays. Thanksgiving Eve, on the Wednesday night before, has been one of the busiest nights of the year for bars and clubs, both in terms of sales and volume of patrons, as many students have returned to their hometowns from college. Since being fixed at the fourth Thursday in November by law in 1941, the holiday in the United States can occur as early as November 22 to as late as November 28. When it falls on November 22 or 23, it is not the last Thursday, but the second to last Thursday in November. As it is a Federal holiday, all United States government offices are closed and employees are paid for that day. It is also a holiday for the New York Stock Exchange, and also for most other financial markets and financial services companies. The Friday after Thanksgiving, although not a Federal holiday, is often a company holiday for many in the U.S. workforce, except for those in retail. It is also a day off for most schools. The Friday after Thanksgiving, colloquially known as Black Friday, is usually the start of the Christmas shopping season. The term "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).

So here's wishing Happy Thanksgiving for my visitors who celebrate the holiday. Cheers :)