The Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated each November in the United States. Thanksgiving was a harvest festival, first held by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in 1621. The day is now observed by church services and family reunions; the customary turkey dinner is a reminder of the four wild turkeys served at the Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving feast.













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Few people realize that the Pilgrims did not celebrate Thanksgiving any year thereafter, though some of their descendants later made a "Forefather's Day" that usually occurred on December 21 or 22. In 1827, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale began lobbying several Presidents for the instatement of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, but her lobbying was unsuccessful until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln finally made it a national holiday with his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation.