Thanksgiving

By: Miriam Edelman

Thanksgiving is a federal holiday that commemorates a harvest feast shared by pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in 1621. In 1789, President George Washington issued the U.S.’s first Thanksgiving proclamation, which turned Thursday November 26^th into a national day of thanks. In 1817, the first state to officially have a Thanksgiving holiday every year was New York. Thanksgiving became a national holiday during the Presidency of Abrahm Lincoln and is now the fourth Thursday of every November.

A humorous Thanksgiving tradition in the U.S. is the annual Presidential pardoning of turkeys at the White House, begun by President George H. W. Bush. President Bill Clinton started the tradition of naming pardoned turkeys. Spared from being the main dish at a Thanksgiving dinner, pardoned turkeys frequently go to turkey farms or petting zoos.

On a more serious side, let’s fix the wrongs that have been inflicted on residents of the nation’s capital for over 200 years. D.C. residents experience taxation without representation and are denied the full rights of U.S. citizenship. The only and best remedy is statehood for the District of Columbia. D.C. residents voted for statehood in 2016 and would be thankful if D.C actually became a state.