n.
the federal holiday of Thanksgiving in the US.
Type: 1. Origin — Thanksgiving is celebrated in both Canada and the US. In Canada, the celebration draws from three traditions: European harvest traditions, Martin Frobisher's 1578 Thanksgiving in the Eastern Arctic, which is the first North American celebration by that name, and the 1621 Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims on occasion of their first harvest. Frobisher's celebration is the Canadian claim to the 'first' Thanksgiving, while Americans commonly refer to the feast celebrated by the Pilgrims as the 'first' one. The harvest celebration was brought to Canada in the 175os in Halifax, where a 1763 Thanksgiving Day was observed to celebrate the end of the Seven Years' War (Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. "Thanksgiving"). With the immigration of Loyalists at the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, traditions around Thanksgiving were brought into central and western Canada.
In the US, George Washington proclaimed 26 November 1789 as a day of Thanksgiving. Before the American Civil War, only American presidents Washington, John Adams and James Madison declared Thanksgiving to be a holiday. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving Day, and it has been celebrated since then in that country (see Library of Congress reference). Canada began to observe the holiday by individual proclamations, year after year, in 1879. In 1957, a proclamation was issued fixing Thanksgiving as a national holiday on the second Monday in October.
See also: Canadian Thanksgiving
- Although both Canadians and Americans refer to their respective holidays as "Thanksgiving", American Thanksgiving is used by Canadians to distinguish the American celebration from the Canadian one, while Canadian Thanksgiving is usually called, by default, Thanksgiving (see, e.g. the 2010 quotation), unless when dealing with Americans. In the US, the holiday is generally referred to simply as "Thanksgiving".