By Tresa Erickson
When we sit down at Thanksgiving to break bread with family and friends, thoughts may turn to those of long ago who shared the first Thanksgiving feast. After a long, hard year in the New World in which nearly half of the colony was lost, the Pilgrims celebrated a fruitful harvest, feasting on wild fowl and other foods in the company of the natives who had helped them survive.
Thanksgiving was not celebrated again until the summer of 1676 when the folks of Charlestown, MA, gave thanks for their good fortune that year. It would be another hundred years before Thanksgiving would be celebrated again, this time in the fall of 1777 with the 13 colonies. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving, but not everyone complied and the event soon fell out of favor. The celebration of a national Thanksgiving might have been lost, if not for the efforts of a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale.
A widow with five kids to raise, Hale worked as a writer and editor, churning out piece after piece, including the children’s poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Hale also worked on the behalf of many causes, including the education of women and the establishment of a national Thanksgiving.
While some states celebrated Thanksgiving at various points throughout the year, others did not. Hale felt a need to have one national event and dedicated nearly 20 years of her life to the cause. She gathered public support with several pieces in the magazines she edited, Boston Ladies’ Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book. She also wrote letters to many high public officials, including Presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln.
Finally, in 1863, Hale’s efforts paid off when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation urging Americans to come together on the last Thursday in November and give thanks for all of life’s blessings in spite of the internal conflict. Hale had accomplished what had seemed impossible.
Every president since has issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. To extend the holiday shopping season, President Franklin Roosevelt twice switched the date of Thanksgiving to the next to last Thursday. The public did not favor his idea, and Roosevelt returned to the original date in his following proclamations. In 1941, Congress established Thanksgiving as a national holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. Hale died in 1879, but would no doubt had been pleased to hear that the holiday she had fought so hard for was now a permanent fixture in American culture.