Thanksgiving blends various religious, political and harvest traditions into the main U.S. family celebration. It opens the winter holiday season.
It is supposed to commemorate feasts of thanks for survival and a good harvest by early English immigrants in Virginia and Massachusetts.
This is part of the United States creation story. We are a nation of diverse immigrants. Part of the purpose of Thanksgiving is to bind diverse peoples into one. Regardless of where we are from, we can all be thankful for having made it here.
Thanksgiving has replaced Christmas and Easter as the main family holiday in the United States. The day before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day in the U.S.
The main event for most Americans inf the United States is dinner with family members. Turkey is the traditional meal.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
The main event in New York City is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Fraunces Tavern
If you want to get historic about it, have Thanksgiving dinner at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan’s Financial District. There are stories that the tavern owner Samuel Fraunces was Black, French or Haitian, but nobody really knows.
Taverns in that era were more like union halls where you could get news and find work. Fraunces Tavern did play several minor roles in the American Revolution. It is where George Washington bid farewell to his troops when the British finally abandoned New York in 1783.