Happy Thanksgiving!!!

[Zoso]

I hope everyone has a great holiday and gains 10 pounds today.

[Hawk]

I'll second that, well-except for the 10 pounds. I've already gained 15 pounds since I quite drinking.

[acorn_farmer_84]

I hope everyone has a great holiday and gains 10 pounds today.

is today a public holiday for you americans?


We dont celebrate it or anything at all in Australia,
and its not really in the media here either, only know its on via american websites and stuff.

[Hawk]

Thanksgiving is a national holiday for us. 90% of the folks in this country are off work.
It's supposed to be a celebration/remembrance of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock and stems from giving thanks at the end of the harvest.

From Wikipedia:

U.S. tradition associates the holiday with a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This element continues in modern times with the Thanksgiving dinner, often featuring turkey, playing a large role in the celebration of Thanksgiving. Some of the details of the American Thanksgiving story are myths that developed in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of the effort to forge a common national identity in the aftermath of the Civil War and in the melting pot of new immigrants.

We're not the only ones that celebrate it. Canada, England, and Germany have similar holidays.
Again from Wikipedia:

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks (traditionally to a God), for the things one has at the close of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, and in Canada it is celebrated on the second Monday in October. In the United Kingdom, Thanksgiving is another name for the Harvest festival, held in churches across the country on a relevant Sunday to mark the end of the local harvest, though it is not thought of as a major event (compared to Christmas or Easter) as it is in North America, where this tradition taken by early settlers became much more important. Other European countries, such as Germany, also have harvest-thanks (Erntedank) celebrations which are perceived to be rather minor and mostly rural holidays.[1]