Thanksgiving History and Beyond!

How well do you know your Thanksgiving history?

• When was the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

• When was the first Thanksgiving Day football game played?

• When was the first Thanksgiving celebrated?

• Which President established the Thanksgiving holiday, and in what year?

The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade took place in 1924. Interestingly enough, while it is now a Thanksgiving tradition, the first parade actually took place on Christmas of 1924. The first parade was done with the hope of attracting people to Macy’s store in NYC. More than 250,000 people attended the inaugural parade. This year more than 3.5 million people will line the streets of NYC to take in the parade.

The first NFL Thanksgiving Day football game was played in 1934, in the University of Detroit Stadium between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears. The 11-0 Chicago Bears beat the 10-1 Detroit Lions 19-16 in front of a sellout crowd of 26,000.

Some people now think that the football is as important as the meal which lead Erma Bombeck to proclaim,

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare.  They are consumed in twelve minutes.  Half-times take twelve minutes.  This is not coincidence.  

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621.  After the first harvest in the new world, Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony invited the Pilgrims to keep a day of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was established on the last Thursday in November in 1863.  After the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation to observe a day of prayer and thanksgiving. A proclamation filled with prose that would likely draw harsh criticism today.

“People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Now that you are equipped with some fun facts to share over Thanksgiving dinner - what about thanks and gratitude?

There is something about thanks and gratitude that make them amazingly simple, somewhat perplexing, uncommonly challenging, yet eternally rewarding.

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratis that means grace, graciousness or gratefulness.  Feeling thankful and demonstrating thanks are two different things.  Demonstrating thankfulness is powerful while feeling thankful is fleeting.

When you embrace an attitude of gratitude and share thanks and appreciation with others your brain engages in what neurologists call a virtuous cycle.  The science is based on the fact that the brain cannot focus on a negative and a positive at the same time.

Think of a virtuous cycle as Thanksgiving dinner for the brain.  Once you start expressing thanks and gratitude your brain starts looking for things to be thankful and grateful for, and you have engaged in a virtuous cycle.

Research shows people who consistently possess an attitude of thanks and gratitude demonstrate increases in determination, attention, enthusiasm, optimism, and energy. As well as increased exercise patterns, improved sleep, reduced physical aliments, and reduced levels of anxiety.

"To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him."

Thomas Merton (Thoughts on Solitude)

Who will be or was missing from your Thanksgiving celebration that you are grateful for?