The first time Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in North America was in 1578 when English explorer Martin Frobisher arrived on the new continent and ordered a ceremony to thank God for the protection given to his party during the long and dangerous ocean crossing. However, most modern North Americans associate the Thanksgiving tradition with the Founding Fathers.
Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November because President Abraham Lincoln declared this day a holiday in his famous Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863.
Perhaps few people know that Sarah Josepha Hale, one of the most important women, yet little recognized in American history, was behind the President’s decision. Sarah influenced the President to officially proclaim a Thanksgiving Day, believing that observing it would unite the country and bring it back together, during the difficult period of the War of Secession (also known as the Civil War). The dish that absolutely cannot be missed at the table on Thanksgiving Day is the turkey, whose original consumption dates back to the people of the Aztecs, in the newly conquered Americas, and then "re-imported" more than a century later to the coasts of Massachusetts by the Founding Fathers. In each family it is cooked according to its own secret recipe, and is often accompanied by other typical dishes such as gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and vegetables of various kinds.
