The Thanksgiving holiday’s history in North America is rooted in
English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation. It also
has aspects of a harvest festival, even though the harvest in
New England occurs well before the late-November date on
which the modern Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated.       

    
An annual thanksgiving holiday tradition in North American
colonies is documented for the first time in 1619, in what is
now called the Commonwealth of Virginia.  
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
    
   

Jennie Augusta Brownscombe‘s The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth.

The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held on
November 27, 1924, in New York City, and was originally
called the Macy’s Christmas Parade.

Organized by Macy’s employees to celebrate the opening
of their new flagship store, the event featured floats,
professional bands, and live animals borrowed from the
Central Park Zoo, concluding with Santa Claus arriving
at Herald Square.

Santa in his Sleigh at the first Macy’s Christmas Parade.

Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery
in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over
by President Warren G. Harding.

Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had
fallen somewhere on a World War I battlefield, arrived at
the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France.

As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-
inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his
coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which
he died.

     
    
    
    
    
   
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the
Great War ended. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of
manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion,
signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car
outside Compiégne, France.