Thanksgiving closures and history
Many government offices and services will close for Thanksgiving on Thursday, Nov. 28, and remain so through Friday. This includes U.S. post offices, most banks, the cities of Marble Falls, Burnet, Horseshoe Bay, Bertram, Granite Shoals, and Cottonwood Shores, and Burnet and Llano counties.
Major retailers, including Walmart, will also close on Thanksgiving Thursday but reopen the next day for Black Friday shoppers. H-E-B grocery stores will be open from 6 a.m. to noon Thursday.
THANKSGIVING HISTORY
Thanksgiving, always the fourth Thursday in November, is a national holiday inspired by a 1621 feast shared between Plymouth colonists and the native Wampanoag people to celebrate a successful harvest that fall in what is now the state of Massachusetts.
Over time, it evolved into a broader tradition of gratitude.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as an annual holiday during the Civil War, emphasizing unity and healing.
The holiday is rooted in Native American harvest traditions, such as the Cherokee Green Corn Dance, which predates the 1621 feast.
According to the journal of Plymouth pilgrim Edward Winslow, the colonists likely had some kind of bird on their Thanksgiving menu, as they were sent on a “fowling” mission by their leader, Gov. William Bradford. They certainly had plenty of venison as at least five deer were brought to the feast by the Wampanoags.
Familiar favorites like corn, carrots, onions, and peas would have been at the table, but not potatoes. The root vegetable was not widely distributed in the 17th century as it was only made known to Europeans when Spanish explorers came across them in South America in the late 1500s. Potatoes had been grown by the Incas of Peru for thousands of years before that.
Plenty of seafood was enjoyed at the first Thanksgiving, a stark difference from modern American tables.
An excerpt from Winslow’s journal reads:
“Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels … at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.
Read more about Thanksgiving in the National Archives.