News, Puerto Vallarta

Thanksgiving Dinner and Football at Garza Blanca

November 3, 2021

This Thanksgiving holiday, Garza Blanca Preserve Resort & Spa in Puerto Vallarta invites you to take part in a special American Thanksgiving celebration. Thanksgiving dinner will be held at TierraLuna Gardens, a fantastic outdoor event space in the heart of Garza Blanca Preserve with the sparkling Pacific Ocean on one side and the lush Sierra Madre mountains on the other. Enjoy a classic American Thanksgiving buffet dinner underneath the stars while cheering on your favorite football team. In keeping with tradition, there will be a special transmission of the NFL Football game on a giant screen as the New Orleans Saints play the Buffalo Bills.

Guests staying at Garza Blanca Preserve and its neighboring sister resort, Hotel Mousai, will be able to enjoy an incredible feast with traditional turkey and stuffing with cranberry sauce. Along with turkey, other succulent meats will be served including grilled chicken with fine herbs, beef tenderloin, Alaska salmon, and rib eye steak. As an accompaniment, you will also be able to find traditional Thanksgiving side dishes such as grilled veggies, creamy mashed potatoes, sweet corn, and sautéed green beans. And no Thanksgiving meal would be complete without pumpkin pie. There will be plenty of that as well as other delicious desserts including carrot cake, fruit pie, chocolate brownies, and ice cream. So bring your appetite and come to cheer on your favorite football team.

Ever since the 1920s, pro football has been played on Thanksgiving Day and has become a longstanding American tradition. The Saints and the Bills first faced off in 1973. The Saints won the game with a 13-0 shutout, the first in club history. Whether you cheer for the Saints or the Bills this year, there is sure to be some exciting NFL action to go along with your turkey feast.

Thanksgiving dinner will take place at TierraLuna Gardens on November 25th, 2021, from 7:00 pm – 10:30 pm. The NFL game starts at 7:20 pm. If you plan to attend, we recommend that you make your reservations in advance since space is limited.

History of Thanksgiving

In the US, Thanksgiving celebrations occur on the fourth Thursday of November and in Canada it is celebrated on the second Monday of October. This holiday began to give thanks for the harvest and other blessings of the preceding year.

Thanksgiving started historically as a religious tradition, but it has been celebrated as a secular holiday for a long time. For many Americans, a traditional Thanksgiving meal would not be complete without a turkey and watching football.

This year the Thanksgiving day football line up will be happening on Central Time according to the following schedule:

11:30 am – Chicago Bears versus Detroit Lions

3:30 pm – Las Vegas Raiders versus Dallas Cowboys

7:20 pm – New Orleans Saints versus Buffalo Bills

Turkey and Football at TierraLuna

In order to continue this well-established tradition of feasting and football this November 25th, Garza Blanca Preserve Resort and Spa will be hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at TierraLuna with a special NFL Transmission on the big screen, which you can watch in the open air underneath the night sky.

Cost: $950 pesos per person. The cost for children aged 5-11 is half price, $475 pesos.

Time: 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm

Location: Garza Blanca Beach

The buffet will feature special decorations including pumpkins and horns of plenty. Each guest will receive a welcome drink.

History of the American Tradition

The history of the Thanksgiving feast is somewhat controversial, but the predominantly held view is that the first Thanksgiving feast took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts in November 1621.

The Mayflower Pilgrims were a group of 102 passengers who sailed to the New World from Plymouth, England on a small ship called the Mayflower. They left in search of prosperity and the promise of land ownership. The journey was arduous and it took more than three months for them to reach Massachusetts Bay, where they established a village at Plymouth. It is the oldest municipality in New England and one of the oldest in the United States.

Many of the Pilgrims stayed on board the ship during their first brutal winter in New England and they suffered from exposure, scurvy, and contagious disease. By spring, only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew remained. The surviving settlers moved ashore in March and they were visited by a few Indians who helped them forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe.

In November 1621, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered for an autumn harvest celebration after their first successful corn harvest. The celebrations lasted for three days.

Thanksgiving continued to be celebrated by individual colonies and states and was celebrated nationally on and off starting in 1789 with a proclamation by President George Washington. Finally in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held on the last Thursday of November.

Sarah Josepha Hale, sometimes referred to as the “mother” or “godmother” of Thanksgiving, is thought to be an influential person responsible for Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday since she had been campaigning for that for several years.

The reason for her advocacy was that each New England state celebrated its own holiday at different times between October and January. She wrote letters to five Presidents requesting their support for a national Thanksgiving holiday. It is thought that the letter she wrote to Lincoln finally convinced him to support legislation to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. The new national holiday was intended to be a unifying day to relieve stress during the American Civil War.

In 1939, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the fourth (next-to-last) Thursday of November instead of the last, fifth one.

This change of date was intended to extend the Christmas shopping season and help to bring the country out of depression. Since December 1941, Thanksgiving has been held on the fourth Thursday in November and this date is now fixed.

History of the Canadian Tradition

The origins of Thanksgiving Day in Canada differ from the American version of the holiday.

The first Thanksgiving by Europeans in North America was held back in 1578 by English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew in what is now Nunavut, Canada. They ate a meal of salt beef, biscuits, and mushy peas to celebrate their safe passage through the New World after facing many obstacles.

On November 6, 1879, Canadian Thanksgiving was officially declared a national holiday. The celebration featured North American turkey, squash and pumpkin. In 1957, Thanksgiving was proclaimed an annual event to occur on the second Monday of October. All the provinces and territories except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia observe this day as an official statutory holiday.

Celebrations

While both the American and Canadian Thanksgiving traditions have diverged from their roots, today Thanksgiving is celebrated as a day for family and friends to get together to enjoy a feast and give thanks for their blessings. For both holidays, turkey is the traditional Thanksgiving fare and while turkeys are more affordable now than they were back in the 1800s, they still remain a symbol of bounty.

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful and to give thanks for your blessings, your family and loved ones. It is a time for families to enjoy each other’s company, and also cheer on your favorite football team!