Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, but today is celebrated in a more worldly method. Thanksgiving Day is an ethnic holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Several other places around the world perceive similar celebrations. This is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada.
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated between the Pilgrims and the Indians in 1621.That first celebration were a three day order. It was also a time of prayer, thanking God for a good crop. The Pilgrims and the Indians created a huge celebration containing a wide diversity of animals and fowl, as well as fruits and vegetables from the fall product. This early celebration was the start of today's holiday celebration. Like then, we celebrate with a huge celebration.
Today, most of us enjoy Turkey with "all the modification". The "modification" includes a wide diversity of foods that are a tradition for your family. Those common foods often repeat the foods at the first Thanksgiving feast. While others, is traditional ethnic or religious group’s recipe, or a special food item that your family always serves at Thanksgiving dinner. Then, to top it off, pumpkin pies, apple pies, an even mince meat pies are bountiful around the table.
In many homes, family members will each mention something they are very thankful for. American Thanksgiving traditions rotate around a huge and dissipate meal, usually with Turkey as the centerpiece. For those who do not like Turkey, a Roast or Prime Rib is common. As tradition has it in most families, a special prayer of thanks precedes the meal.
Turkey actually did not become a part of the American Thanksgiving tradition until the 1860s. Turkey did not achieve its prominent status as the centerpiece of the holiday meal until after World War II, when the poultry industry’s aggressive marketing and development of larger hybrid turkeys made the turkey into a symbol of American abundance.
Thanksgiving’s of today are marked by a mix of old and new traditions, as many families gather together to eat many of the same foods that their ancestors did. The melting pot of America, though, with influxes of immigrants from all over the world has made for many variations on the traditional Thanksgiving meal. The meals we eat today are also more likely to come from further away and are processed to a much greater extent than Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries could have understood.

Corn, sweet potatoes, and pork form the backbone of traditional southern home cooking, and these staple foods provided the main ingredients in southern Thanksgiving additions like ham, sweet potato casseroles, pies and puddings, and corn bread dressing. Other popular southern contributions include ambrosia (a layered fruit salad traditionally made with citrus fruits and coconut; some more recent recipes use mini-marshmallows and canned fruits), biscuits, a host of vegetable casseroles, and even macaroni and cheese. Unlike the traditional New England menu, with its mince, apple and pumpkin pie dessert course, southerners added a range and selection of desserts unknown in northern dining rooms, including regional cakes, pies, puddings, and numerous cobblers. Many of these Thanksgiving menu additions spread across the country with relocating southerners. Southern cookbooks (of which there are hundreds) and magazines also helped popularize many of these dishes in places far beyond their southern roots. Some, like sweet potato casserole, pecan pie, and corn bread dressing, have become as expected on the Thanksgiving table as turkey and cranberry sauce.