Thanksgiving Day – U.S. Embassy Closure

November 21, 2012

Amman - The U.S. Embassy in Amman will be closed on Thursday, November 22, 2012 in observance of Thanksgiving Day. The Embassy will resume normal hours of operation on Sunday, November 25, 2012.

Thanksgiving Day is an official holiday and celebrated primarily in the United States. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.

In the United States, Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to 1621 celebration at Plymouth to commemorate the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter. In that year Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. The colonists celebrated it as a traditional English harvest feast, to which they invited the local Wampanoag Indians.  George Washington was the first president to declare the holiday, in 1789.  In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving.