Brian Harrington, age 7, of Rutland, Vt., for his question:
WHEN WAS THANKSGIVING FIRST CELEBRATED?
Thanksgiving Day in the United States and Canada is a day set aside to give the people a chance to celebrate with feasting and prayer the blessings they may have reached during the year.
The first New England Thanksgiving Day was delebrated less than a year after the Plymouth colonists settled in the new land. The first winter in Massachusetts had been a very hard one and nearly half of the members of the colony had been killed.
New hope for the colony, however, grew during the summer of 1621. The corn harvest had been excellent. Gov. William Bradford later decreed that a three day feast be held. And he also declared Thanksgiving Day for both celebration and prayer for July 30, 1623.
The women of the colony spent many days preparing for the feast. The children helped by turning roasts on spits in front of open fires. And Indians brought wild turkeys and deer meat. From the men of the colony came geese, ducks and fish.
With the meat and fish, the women also served journey cake which was made with corn meal and nuts. Succotash, which is a combination of kernels of corn mixed with lima beans, was also on the menu. Everyone ate outdoors at big tables.
Setting days for thanks actually goes back for many thousands of years. People have held harvest festivals almost as long as there have been harvests. But the American ideas of a day for feasting and prayer probably grew out of the harvest home celebrations of England.
Many early Thanksgiving observances in America were entirely religious and did not involve feasting. One of the first was held on December 4, 1619, near what is now Charles City, Virginia.
President George Washington issued a general proclamation in 1789 naming November 26 as a national day of thanksgiving. Then in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be a day of "thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father."
It wasn't until 1941 that the Congress of the United States finally ruled that the fourth Thursday of November would be observed as Thanksgiving Day and that it would be a legal federal holiday. The 75 years before this time, each President had simply proclaimed a celebration each year.
In Canada Thanksgiving Day is celebrated in much the same way as it is in the United States with feasting and prayers. It was formerly celebrated on the last Monday in October but in 1957, the Canadian government proclaimed the second Monday in October for the holiday.
Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, worked for many years to promote the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day in America. With President Lincoln's proclamation, her hard work paid off.
In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt set Thanksgiving Day one week earlier. He wanted to help business by lengthening the shopping period before Christmas. Celebration of the holiday stayed on the third Thursday for two years only.