Thanksgiving is celebrated mainly as a harvest-style holiday for giving thanks, spending time with family, and marking national traditions that grew out of early colonial history in North America. In the U.S., it has also become a big cultural moment with food, travel, parades, and sports layered on top of its older religious and historical roots.

Where Thanksgiving Came From

  • The most famous origin story points to a 1621 harvest feast in Plymouth, where English colonists (often called Pilgrims) shared a multi-day meal with Wampanoag people after a successful harvest. It drew on European harvest festivals and Indigenous agricultural knowledge, especially help the settlers received in learning to grow crops and survive their first years.
  • Beyond that single story, thanksgiving days were common in early New England as special days of prayer to thank God for specific blessings like good harvests or military victories. Over time, these local religious observances blended into a broader, more national idea of a day set aside for gratitude.

How It Became A National Holiday

  • Individual U.S. presidents and states proclaimed occasional “days of thanksgiving” from the late 1700s, including a 1789 national proclamation by George Washington. These were irregular and often tied to particular events, not a fixed annual holiday.
  • In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared a recurring national Thanksgiving to foster unity and gratitude, which helped cement the modern U.S. holiday. In 1941, Congress fixed the date as the fourth Thursday in November, standardizing when people celebrate it across the country.

Why We Do It Today

  • For many people, the focus is on:
    • Gathering with family and friends
    • Sharing a large meal (often turkey, stuffing, and pies)
    • Expressing thanks for health, relationships, and the past year’s “blessings”
  • It also functions as a major cultural event: there are big parades, American football games, school breaks, and travel traditions that have little to do with the original harvest story. Because of this, many people who are not religious, or who are from different backgrounds, still join in for the food and time off.

Native Perspectives And Criticism

  • The common “Pilgrims and Indians sharing a peaceful meal” narrative is incomplete and often glosses over the violence, land theft, and disease that devastated Native nations in the following centuries. Some Indigenous groups and allies use the day for education, remembrance, or protest, highlighting how the holiday’s mythology can hide real historical harms.
  • Educators and Native organizations encourage people to learn about Wampanoag and other Indigenous histories, acknowledge the land they live on, and think critically about how the story of Thanksgiving is told to kids and in media.

So, Why Do We Do Thanksgiving Now?

  • People keep celebrating Thanksgiving because:
    • It offers a built-in moment to pause and practice gratitude.
    • It’s a powerful family and cultural tradition with familiar foods and rituals.
    • It anchors the start of the winter holiday season in the U.S. and Canada.
  • At the same time, there is a growing trend toward celebrating in more reflective ways, balancing the cozy, thankful parts with a more honest look at history and Indigenous experiences.

TL;DR: We “do” Thanksgiving today as a mix of harvest festival, family reunion, gratitude ritual, and national tradition—rooted in colonial-era practices but constantly reinterpreted in light of current values and historical awareness.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.