by Thanksgiving 2024: People celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November Every Year across the USA. As experienced in the last 5 years, this year Thanksgiving will be celebrated as a state public holiday. Also, state government offices will remain closed.
Moreover, the government will give businesses and schools the choice of either remaining open or closing. If we see through our past experiences, most of businesses and schools choose to remain close to give their employees and students a long weekend to enjoy. Certainly, this weekend becomes “Long” because the day next to this Thursday is a “Black Friday”.
Brief History of Thanksgiving Day:
Thanksgiving has a long span of history spread through the various geographies of the Americas. Usually, people know its history since 1863 when it was celebrated as the annual holiday. But its roots are way more down in history’s soil as they go way deeper than the 1850’s. This day was first celebrated across El Paso, Texas in 1598. Then history remains silent about this topic after many years. Then we get the evidence of its celebrations across Virginia colonies and Massachusetts in 1623.
Moreover, In the early days of Thanksgiving, it was just a church service. Also, many communities and America and Europe started to celebrate this day once or even twice a year. After the independence of the United States, this day was first celebrated in 1789 when George Washington called it as national Thanksgiving Day.
Is Thanksgiving a public holiday:
Yes, in the United States, Thanksgiving 2024 is a state-declared public holiday. People celebrate it with full enthusiasm. Also, many business and educational organizations across the country declare it as a holiday for their customers, employees, and students.
The charm of this day increases when this day is followed by a long weekend due to “Black Friday” on the day next to it. People often travel across the country on this weekend.
Thanksgiving Family and Traditional Celebrations:
As we know thanksgiving is not just a holiday. It is the long weekend celebrations. People often choose to travel or have a family meetup. These meetups are followed by some feasts and enjoyment. Whenever the people go on to enjoy the feast then there are some common collections in the food. Some of the famous selections and dishes are:
- roast turkey
- stuffing
- potatoes
- vegetables
- cranberry sauce
- gravy
- pumpkin pie
People also planning a trip this weekend. They often visit the states across the USA, and they also make their visits across other countries.
New & Unique Ways for Thanksgiving 2024 Celebrations:
Here are some new and unique ways to celebrate the Thanksgiving 2024:
Be Thankful to the Moments:
As from the name of the event “Thanksgiving,” you can be thankful for all those moments of joy, happiness, and learning in the past year. You can book a completely new place in the countryside and call your family or friends for meditation and journaling sessions. Also, you can do “sharing moments” in the form of groups to reflect and be thankful for all those past experiences. This idea could be very refreshing.
Celebrate International Thanksgiving 2024:
We know that people often do family gatherings on Thanksgiving and enjoy some of the above-given conventional Thanksgiving dishes. We can add some more sauce of enjoyment if we make this celebration on an international scale. You can randomly allot a culture of each country to each of your family members.
Now, they must wear cultural clothes and prepare the popular cultural dish and bring it to the gathering. This will give you an opportunity to enjoy different cultures and their foods across the world. You will get a multicultural lens to see through the world.
Serving And Enjoying the Long Thanksgiving 2024 Weekend:
You can utilize your Thanksgiving in a meaningful way. You can volunteer on one day or weekend. In this volunteer, you and your family could do various activities like serving food to the homeless people and cleaning local rivers and public places.
Moreover, on the day after volunteering, you can relax for the complete. You could do some leisure activities like watching movies with family, playing indoor games, and creating arts and crafts. This would give you a meaning in the life.
Thanksgiving 2024 Time Capsule:
This isn’t a conventional time capsule. In this capsule, you can take any small container and keep handwritten notes, recipes, and photos of the family. Then you must seal it and plan a trip to your favorite place. Then you can bury this capsule at that place and plan to revisit and open the capsule after some years. After many years when you go to that place, you would not only be able to open that time capsule, but you would be seeing your past self at that place. This will give you double the happiness of revisiting the old moment and planning a trip to that one place.
Thanksgiving 2024 Outdoor Adventure:
You can plan a picnic in some beautiful spot this Thanksgiving 2024. You can either go hiking in the mountains or do some kayaking following some dinner at a nice spot in the nature. These activities will refresh your minds and keep you ready for the coming year.
Unique Thanksgiving 2024 celebration experiences of people across the US:
We share the celebration experiences of people across the USA on different events and holidays in our blog post. If you want to share your personal experiences with us, then you can either comment on this post or you can send us an email at stories@publicholidaysusa.com. We would really appreciate publishing your experiences on our website.
Thanksgiving 2024 With International Students:
Here is the experience of Sarah who lives near the University of Boston. Last year she invited international exchange students to her home for dinner. These students have some international dishes with them. These dishes were completely from different countries. Sarah says that this was a wonderful experience as she was able to show American traditions to others. Also, she was able to see through the perspectives of different cultures.
Storytelling On Thanksgiving 2024 Night:
Anna from Florida shared her story of Thanksgiving 2022. She says that she planned a dinner followed by a storytelling session with her family. Every member of her family shared their stories and the moments for which they are thankful. They shared the things for which their lives were impacted. She also told us that they also documented all those stories and made a film. They saw this film on the next Thanksgiving. Now what we can take away from this example is that Sarah and her family can pass on something productive to the next generation i.e. their live experiences in the form of film.
In a nutshell, Thanksgiving is a long weekend that can be celebrated either traditionally or in a modern and unique way. The history of Thanksgiving teaches us that we should always be thankful for what we have got in life. Since it is a public state holiday then we can celebrate it while enjoying and doing something meaningful.
For Further readings, you can visit our website Public Holidays USA.
