Integration is core to feeling a sense of belonging in your new home and within your new community. At America Dream, we don’t just want to help you find a new place to live, we want to ensure you make it your home. This is why we’ve outlined key holidays such as Thanksgiving, the celebration and participation, of which go a long way to bringing families and communities together while rooting families in the local USA culture.
While we might think we know all about the holiday, there is a lot of historical significance the day holds in the hearts and minds of proud Americans and often having a deeper understanding and reverence for these moments, can help fully immerse one into a community.
As an EB-5 Investor, you get to live like an American citizen. As part of your journey to adjust to American traditions, here are some key things to consider for Thanksgiving to help you embrace the occasion.
When is Thanksgiving?
This year Thanksgiving is on November 24. Each year it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November as per a proclamation issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942.
Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
To give thanks of course. Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among most religions after harvests and at other times. It’s an important time for family and friends to get together and give thanks for the year experienced.
What are the origins of Thanksgiving?
This is where it gets a little confusing.
In the United States, the earliest documentation comes from the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1619, when 38 English settlers arrived aboard the ship Margaret. The landing was marked by a religious celebration as the charter dictated, “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
The more familiar Thanksgiving precedent is based on the story of the Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s. They brought their previous tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England.
The Pilgrims celebrated this with the Wampanoags, a Native American tribe. The Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, now called Oktoberfest.
The Celebration
On Thanksgiving Day, it is common for Americans to share a family meal, attend church and view special sporting events.
Thanksgiving is celebrated in public places with parades such as Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City, ABC Dunkin’ Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia, America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade in Plymouth, Massachusetts, McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago and Bayou Classic Thanksgiving Parade in New Orleans. What Americans call the Holiday Season generally begins with Thanksgiving. The first day after Thanksgiving Day—Black Friday—marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.
The American holiday is particularly rich in legend and symbolism, and the traditional fare of the Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.
In 2010 a new tradition emerged to also celebrate Thanksgiving with a meal with friends, as a separate event. This is referred to as Friendsgiving.
The Turkey
We don’t know for sure that turkey was served at the meal shared between Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians. For meat, the Wampanoag brought deer, and the Pilgrims are said to have provided wild “fowl.”
Strictly speaking, that “fowl” could have been turkeys, but historians think it was probably ducks or geese.
In the 19th century, turkey had become a popular dish at Thanksgiving celebrations but not quite synonymous.
Apart from Dicken’s Christmas Carol, the novel Northwood by Sarah Josepha Hale in 1827 described Thanksgiving with a Turkey at the head of the table with Hale herself, campaigning to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. In 1863 a presidential proclamation by Abraham Lincoln made it official and the story, it appears, evolved from the literature. (Roosevelt moved the dates around a few times until he settled on the fourth Thursday of November.)
Before long, the cultural links between Pilgrims, turkeys, and Thanksgiving became an inextricable and integral part of American schoolchildren’s education.
If you are looking to celebrate your first Thanksgiving as an EB-5 Investor, contact American Dream who can help facilitate and streamline the process of applying for this investment-to-residency Visa.
