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It’s the festive season and its opportunity to celebrate with family and companions. Thanksgiving is coming up and Sweet Pea thought it would be enjoyable to peruse up on the historical backdrop of Thanksgiving. We know our American and Canadian Sweet Pea companions will observe Thanksgiving soon so we trust that your day is loaded with sustenance, family, companions and giggling.

History

In 1621, the Plymouth pioneers and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest that is recognised today as one of the main Thanksgiving festivities in the provinces. For over two centuries, individual provinces and states commended days of thanksgiving. It wasn’t until 1863, amidst the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving Day to be held every November.

Pioneers held their second Thanksgiving festivity in 1623 to check the end of a long dry spell that had weakened the year’s gather and provoked Governor Bradford to require a religious fasting period. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on a yearly or occasional basis got to be a tradition in other New England settlements also. Amid the American Revolution, the Continental Congress assigned at least one day of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the principal Thanksgiving proclamation.

In 1817, New York turned into the first of a few states to authoritatively receive a yearly Thanksgiving occasion; each praised it on an alternate day, Sarah Josepha Hale propelled a campaign to set up Thanksgiving as a national occasion. Abraham Lincoln at long last regarded her demand in 1863, request that God ” commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife ” and to ” heal the wounds of the nation.”

Traditions

• Centres on cooking and imparting a plentiful supper to family and companions
• Turkey a thanksgiving staple
• Other customary nourishment; stuffing, squashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie

• Volunteering is a typical Thanksgiving Day activity – food drives host supper to the less fortunate.
• Parades including the New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which is the biggest, and most acclaimed, with around 2 to 3 million onlookers along its 2.5-mile course and drawing a tremendous TV gathering of people.
• Marching bands, entertainers and elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.
• President of the United States has “pardoned” a couple of turkeys every year. Saving the birds from the butcher and send them to a farm for retirement. A number of U.S. governors also perform the annual turkey pardoning ritual.

Modern thanksgiving

Today’s festivity is a blend of conventions from the New England custom of celebrating a harvest, in the view of New England; and the Puritan Thanksgiving, a grave religious recognition joining prayer and feasting.

Thanksgiving is gathering together to express gratitude a feast with prayerful thanks and nostalgia for a simpler time. Thanksgiving is a deeply meaningful and comforting annual ritual to most Americans. The national memory of a moment in Plymouth, nearly 400 years ago, when two distinct cultures, on the brink of profound and irrevocable change, shared an autumn feast.

Celebrate your thanksgiving this year by creating one of our beautiful fall quilts and show off your fall bags made with designs from  swpea.com

more Thanksgiving machine embroidery designs at http://swpea.com/search?q=thanksgiving