Thanksgiving lands on November 27 in 2025.
The 2025 edition of the annual holiday guide from Fullervision Enterprises
I used to have a History section here but eventually decided to
cede that to Wikipedia. Unfortunately, a few critical race
theorists have come into that space and in the interest of a
fair and accurate depiction of what happened I figured I'd
revive this one to put it in my own words.
Thanksgiving comes from a conflation of two ages-old practices:
the practice of days of thanksgiving, devoted to prayers of
gratitude toward God, and the harvest festival, an autumn feast.
The 1621 celebration we now call the “First Thanksgiving” was a
harvest festival, and though the exact development of the
holiday remains unclear, there is at least some circumstantial
evidence that this event indeed formed the basis for what we
know as Thanksgiving today.
First of all, let's go back to the 1610s. At the time, there
were two English companies with colonial charters on the eastern
North American continent: the Virginia Company and the Plymouth
Company. Virginia held rights to coastal areas around what is
now (of course) Virginia, and Plymouth held rights to the coasts
of what is now Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and
Maine; they were separated by the Dutch, whose New Netherland
colony held the Hudson River valley now belonging to New York
and, for a time, parts of Connecticut. At the time, the land in
that area was held by various tribes: the Patuxet, Wampanoag,
Massachusett, Narragansett, Nauset, Mohicans, and Pequot, with
the Haudenosaunee confederacy looming to the west. These tribes
were constantly battling with each other. At one point, a plague
had devastating effect on the Wampanoag and extirpated the
Patuxet—except one, Squanto.
Though there had been an unsuccessful attempt to settle a
colony in Plymouth territory (Popham Colony in Maine, which
ended after a year after its proprietor died), most of the
English activity in the territory was limited to commercial work
such as fishing and fur trading, without permanent colonies;
they would be stationed in Virginia or the various small
colonies on Newfoundland well to the northeast. Squanto was
captured by one of those merchant ships and sold into slavery in
Spain; an English missionary group emancipated him and arranged
for his return, thereby likely sparing him from the plague. He
learned English during his time in Europe, an important skill
for what would eventually come.
In 1620, the Plymouth Company made a second attempt to colonize
and sent a ship, the Mayflower, containing 102
passengers, most of whom were part of a religious order now
known as the Pilgrims, who had been spending the past 12 years
in the Dutch city of Leiden. The ship landed in December 1620,
at the beginning of a harsh and deadly winter that, along with a
peculiar plague in which many of the otherwise healthy Pilgrims
(including original leader John Carver) were suddenly struck
dead by heart attacks and aneurysms in the middle of their
chores, killed 45 of the passengers. During this winter, the
Pilgrims scavenged for whatever food they could find, including
burial grounds. The remaining Pilgrims, which included four
women and all of the children, pressed on, now under the civil
leadership of William Bradford and the military leadership of
Miles Standish.
Conditions improved rapidly in the spring of 1621, with the
arrival of Samoset, a member of the Wampanoag. It turned out
that the Pilgrims had landed on what otherwise would have been
abandoned Patuxet land—a point that would later become a source
of contention with Roger Williams, who eventually established
what would become Rhode Island; Williams, whose religious
tradition was in the then-new Baptist denomination (whereas the
Pilgrims' modern successors are in the Congregational churches),
had insisted on purchasing land title from the natives, but with
the Patuxet extinct, there was no one left to pay. Samoset, who
also knew some English (and is reported to have asked for a beer
upon meeting the Pilgrims), introduced Squanto to the Pilgrims.
The Wampanoag reasoned that because the Pilgrims had brought
women and children, they were not coming to the region to wage
war; at the same time, knowing that the Pilgrims had firearms,
they viewed the Pilgrims as potentially powerful allies. Squanto
worked with the Pilgrims to introduce native agriculture
techniques for the colonists.
The 1621 harvest was a success, so much so that they were able
to repay the Nauset for the corn they had scavenged from the
burial grounds. That autumn, a harvest festival was held. It was
initially intended to be solely for the Pilgrims, but Wampanoag
arrived after hearing celebratory gunfire; they initially feared
war, but were instead greeted by the Pilgrims inviting them to
partake in the feast. The feast, attended by 53 whites and 90
natives, included a broad collection of turkey, venison stew,
seafood, and native vegetables, particularly pumpkin and a
corn/bean salad known as succotash.
The Pilgrims proved to be valuable allies to the natives, and
peace between the tribes and the Pilgrims would last for 50
years, including during a powerful alliance when virtually all
of the tribes, the English and Dutch united to crush the Pequot
tribe in the Pequot War of the mid-1630s. The alliance
eventually ended in the 1660s and 1670s when the Plymouth Colony
grew too big to be contained. English colonists, buoyed by a
higher birth rate stemming from their religious beliefs,
conquered the more secular, commercialized New Netherland in the
Anglo-Dutch Wars and defeated most of the native tribes in King
Philip’s War. By 1691, much of the northern colonies had taken a
recognizable form, as Plymouth merged with their Puritan
brethren in Massachusetts Bay to form Massachusetts.
By the time of the American revolution, the notion of the
harvest thanksgiving was already an accepted part of the culture
in New England, though the origins were no longer clear. The Old
Colony Club, a small fraternal organization consisting of
Pilgrim descendants, made the case for their forefathers being
the originators of the tradition. Many were later Loyalists who
took the tradition to Canada after being exiled during the
revolution. New York and the New England states began declaring
civil holidays of Thanksgiving in the 1810s; various authors,
including Sarah J. Hale, promoted the holiday as worthy of
national recognition. Southern opposition to this was eventually
solved when the South seceded during the Civil War and Abraham
Lincoln introduced a national Thanksgiving holiday in 1863.
After Reconstruction, the South eventually embraced the holiday
particularly with the introduction of another American
tradition: football. They would also contribute Southern dishes
to the traditional dinner, including pecans and sweet potatoes.
The turkey pardon has its roots in a ritual by Horace Vose, a
Rhode Island farmer who presented a turkey to the President each
year from 1873 until his death in 1913. Vose's death set off a
free-for-all of competing attempts to offer a turkey to the
President. Following World War II, President Harry Truman
attempted to continue rationing campaigns to encourage
rebuilding efforts overseas, but his attempt to stop people from
eating poultry on Thursday raised a problem because in 1947, not
only was Thanksgiving on a Thursday, but Christmas and New
Year's Day 1948 as well. The poultry lobby eventually fought the
restrictions, leading to the National Thanksgiving Turkey
Presentation. Various presidents in the 1970s and 1980s spared
their turkeys from slaughter and sent them to petting zoos;
Ronald Reagan joked in response to Iran-Contra questions that he
would have pardoned his 1987 bird, Charlie, if he had to. In
1989, speechwriters for Reagan’s successor George Bush did just
that: had the President pardon the turkey, a tradition carried
on each year since.
New England Calvinists had traditionally celebrated
Thanksgiving instead of Christmas (the latter of which they saw
as corrupted by paganism), but by the 1920s (possibly influenced
by Dutch Christmas traditions published in the early 1800s),
Thanksgiving was already emerging as the start of the holiday
shopping season. Major retailers such as Macy’s and Gimbels
introduced the Thanksgiving Day parades in the 1920s, in part to
stop the practice of ragamuffin begging that was interrupting
holiday dinners (that practice eventually evolved into
trick-or-treating around Halloween). In the late 1930s, Franklin
Roosevelt's efforts to move the holiday up a week led to a
compromise setting the day on its current date of the fourth
Thursday in November.
Recipes from the Wikibooks Cookbook
| Time |
title sponsor |
City |
State |
📺TV | 📻Radio |
📱💻Mobile/web |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5:00a |
Novant Health Encore presentation |
Charlotte |
NC |
WCCB |
||
| 8:30a |
Macy's |
New York |
NY |
NBC |
WINS |
💵Peacock |
| 9 a.m. |
Dunkin' Donuts |
Philadelphia |
PA |
6ABC |
ABC News Live |
|
| 9 a.m. |
America's |
Detroit |
MI |
WDIV |
||
| 9 a.m. |
— |
Chicago |
IL |
WCIU |
Pluto
TV Christmas |
|
| 10 a.m. |
Ameren |
St. Louis |
MO |
KMOV |
||
| 10 a.m. |
H-E-B |
Houston |
TX |
KHOU |
||
| 10 a.m. | America's Hometown Encore presentation |
Plymouth | MA | WCVB | Very
Local Zeam |
|
| 12 noon |
First Light FCU |
El Paso |
TX |
KTSM |
| Time |
Venue |
City |
State |
📺TV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6:20 a.m. |
WJW Garage |
Cleveland |
OH |
WJW |
| Time |
Away | Home | 📺TV |
📻Radio | 📱Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 P.M. |
|||||
| Green Bay Packers |
Detroit Lions |
📶FOX 💵FoxOne |
Westwood1 |
💵NFL+ | |
| 4:25 p.m. |
|||||
| Kansas City Chiefs |
Dallas Cowboys |
📶CBS 💵Paramount+ |
Westwood1 Compass |
💵NFL+ |
|
| 8:30 p.m. | |||||
| Cincinnati Bengals |
Baltimore Ravens |
📶NBC 💵Peacock |
Westwood1 |
💵NFL+ |
| Time |
Away | Home | 📻Radio | 📺Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 P.M. |
Turkey Day Classic |
|||
| Tuskegee Golden Tigers
|
Alabama State Hornets |
SWAC TV |
||
| 7:30 p.m. |
||||
| Navy Midshipmen |
Memphis Tigers |
ESPN |
||
All games start between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time
except Kirkwood/Webster Groves, which kicks off at 1:00
Eastern/noon Central.
| State |
AWAY |
HOME |
State |
📻Radio | 📺Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maine |
Naine |
||||
| Deering |
Portland |
Hudl |
|||
| new hampshire |
New hampshire |
||||
| Manchester |
City Championship | MPTV | |||
| Massachusetts | Massachusetts | ||||
| Haverhill | Lowell | WCAP | 💵NFHS |
||
| Duxbury |
Marshfield |
WATD |
MCM |
||
| Brockton |
Bridgewater-Raynham |
WMBS |
|||
| Attleboro |
N. Attleboro |
WARA |
DoubleACS | ||
| Palmer |
Ludlow |
WARE |
|||
| New Bedford |
B.M.C. Durfee |
WNBH |
|||
| Diman |
G.NewBedford VoTech |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Braintree | Milton | BCAM | |||
| Plymouth North | Plymouth South | EDTV | |||
| Swampscott | Marblehead | YouTube | |||
| Revere | Winthrop | YouTube | |||
| Westborough | Algonquin | WestboroughTV | |||
| Canton | Stoughton | YouTube | |||
| Abington | Whitman-Hanson | AbingtonCA | |||
| E. Longmeadow | Longmeadow | ELCAT | |||
| Danvers | Gloucester | DCAT | |||
| Melrose | Wakefield | WakefieldCAT | |||
| Foxborough | Mansfield | FCA | |||
| Marlborough |
Hudson |
MCAT |
|||
| Clinton | Nashoba | YouTube | |||
| Ridley | Interboro | YouTube | |||
| Franklin | King Philip | FPTV |
|||
| Metheun | Dracut | DATV |
|||
| Dighton-Rehoboth | Seekonk | YouTube | |||
| Groton | Fitch | YouTube | |||
| Newton North | Brookline | YouTube | |||
| Brighton | Saugus | YouTube | |||
| Norwell | Hanover | YouTube | |||
| Barnstable |
Falmouth |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Norton |
Bellingham |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Ralph C. Mahar |
Athol |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Doherty |
Burncoat |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Atlantis |
Joseph Case |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Agawam |
West Springfield |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Connecticut |
Connecticut |
||||
| Darien | New Canaan | YouTube | |||
| Waterford | East Lyme | The Day | |||
| Woodstock Academy |
Killingly |
💵NFHS |
|||
| St. Joseph |
trumbull |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Stratford |
Bunnell |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Fitch |
Ledyard |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Norwich Free Academy |
New London |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Sheehan |
Lyman Hall |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Cranston East |
Cranston West |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Bridgeport |
Harding |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Derby |
Oxford |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Weston |
Joel Barlow |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Branford |
East Haven |
💵NFHS |
|||
| New Milford |
New Fairfield |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Notre Dame West Hamden |
Hamden |
💵NFHS |
|||
| West Haven |
North Haven |
NHTV |
|||
| Griswold | Plainfield | SNSN |
|||
| Joseph A. Foran |
Jonathan Law |
YouTube |
|||
| Shelton |
Amity |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Rhode Island |
|||||
| Westerly |
Stonington |
321Westerly |
|||
| Rhode Island |
|||||
| Cumberland |
Woonsocket |
WOON |
WOON |
||
| East Providence |
La Salle Academy |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Portsmouth |
Middletown |
NFHS |
|||
| West Warwick |
Coventry |
WWRI |
YouTube |
||
| Rogers |
Tiverton |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Ponaganset |
Burrillville |
💵NFHS |
|||
| New York (City) |
New York (City) |
||||
| Mount Saint Michael | Cardinal Hayes | YouTube |
|||
| Xavier H.S. | Fordham Prep | YouTube |
|||
| PA |
Pennsylvania |
||||
| Haverford |
Upper Darby |
YouTube |
|||
| Quakertown | Pennridge | YouTube | |||
| New Jersey |
|||||
| Philipsburg |
Easton |
WEEX |
WFMZ |
||
| New Jersey | |||||
| Hamilton West |
Steinert |
WBCB |
WBCB |
||
| Tenafly |
Dumont |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Middletown N | Middletown S | BigState | |||
| Eastside |
John F. Kennedy |
💵NFHS |
|||
| Millville | Vineland | YouTube | |||
| Holy Spirit | Atlantic City | BFA | |||
| Hackensack | Teaneck | BigState |
|||
| WIP-FM | |||||
| Maryland |
Calvert Hall | Loyola Blakefield | MD |
WMAR | |
| Missouri |
Kirkwood | Webster Groves |
KWRH |
YouTube |
TV specials and marathons will be posted in mid-November as
channels put out their schedules.
Fullervision Enterprises, Unltd. 2025