If you’re from any country that celebrates Thanksgiving, you know what this holiday is. For the rest of the world, understanding it is a little bit trickier. So, we’re here to enlighten you. 

Basically, it’s a day of giving thanks for the things that happened during the preceding year, hence the name. At least in the United States, it occurs every fourth Thursday of November. So, this year it will happen on November 28th. At the same time, in Canada, it is celebrated on the second Monday of October, and it already happened this year on October 14th. 

In the US, Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863, even though the "first" known celebration happened in 1621. The story behind it, usually told from the white pilgrims’ point of view, is that colonists shared a meal with the indigenous Wampanoag people so that they could give thanks for a successful fall harvest. 

Technically, Wampanoag members weren’t invited. When the pilgrims got rowdy during their feast, they started shooting into the air, so the indigenous group came to see if there was a need to fight and ended up joining the celebration. 

Granted, it should be noted that this and all similar stories should be taken with a grain of salt, as the accounts of the story have blended and it's become too difficult to differentiate what's true and what's not. 

Now, the holiday that was recognized in 1863 is usually celebrated with a family dinner. Typically, it includes foods like turkey, potatoes, corn, cranberries, and pumpkin pie, to name a few. 

As you can see in today’s list of vintage Thanksgiving postcards, turkeys, the birds eaten during the feast, dominate the imagery. The bird appears in nearly all of the postcards we included. But why’s that? 

It’s all due to the American writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who is dubbed the godmother of Thanksgiving. After she wrote her famous book “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” she was offered a job in “Ladies’ Magazine” and became the first woman to be an editor of a magazine in the United States. 

During her time in this position, she wrote hundreds of letters to important people in the US asking them to make the last Thursday in November an “offer to God our tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year.” She achieved her goal when President Lincoln made Thanksgiving official. 

Besides playing an important part in Thanksgiving's recognition, Sarah also wrote in her novel “Northwood” about a turkey being the star of the holiday’s dinner table, and it remains one even more than 100 years after the writer’s death. 

Well, it’s interesting and kind of beautiful to see how a dedicated woman basically created a tradition that outlived her. So, let’s go celebrate it (if you do), but not before you enjoy these vintage postcards to get you in the mood!