School will not be in session for Thanksgiving Break on November 25, 26, and 27.
Thanksgiving, which occurs on the fourth Thursday in November, is based on the colonial Pilgrims' 1621 harvest meal. Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity.
Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America on November 26, 1789. Today, families gather together, give thanks, and eat large meals of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes & gravy, corn, green beans, and pumpkin pie.