Although we think of Thanksgiving in terms of the Native Americans meeting the Pilgrims upon their arrival in the New World at Plymouth Rock, and then feeding them sometime within that year, the experts disagree on when this actually happened and if indeed it did happen at Plymouth Rock. Some say the first Thanksgiving took place around 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. Not in 1621 at Plymouth Rock.

So while the experts may disagree on the origins of the American Thanksgiving tradition, they all agree that it was President Lincoln who in 1863 proclaimed it a national holiday all at the urging of a magazine editor by the name of Sara Joseph Hale. Then in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day to where it is today.