For Sarah Hale, Give Thanks

The first Thanksgiving was a day of gratitude, of relief, perhaps of joy. But the first Thanksgiving Day--the official, national holiday we’re celebrating today--was the product of downright hectoring by Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother of five who harangued presidents from John Quincy Adams to Abraham Lincoln to declare the day a holiday. It was Lincoln who finally cottoned to the idea and made the last Thursday in November the national Thanksgiving Day.

So we give thanks today for myriad bounties, and to the Widow Hale of New England for making this a special day.

The accepted origins of Thanksgiving lie in the Plymouth Colony, where Gov. William Bradford issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in October 1621. The English immigrants gave thanks for surviving their first winter and for bountiful harvests by sharing wild turkey and venison with Native Americans.

Thanksgiving observations thereafter were sporadic even after President George Washington proclaimed Nov. 26, 1789, a day of national thanksgiving to be celebrated with prayer.

Enter Hale, who was determined to make her living as a writer (she wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). As editor of first the Ladies’ Magazine and then the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book, she launched her Thanksgiving campaign with an 1827 editorial. She pushed the idea year after year, complete with Thanksgiving menus and themes. In October 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, she editorialized that a single thanksgiving day would help put aside “sectional feeling” and unify the nation. That convinced Lincoln. Thanksgiving Day became official.

All was unchanged until mid-August 1939, late in the Depression, when President Franklin Roosevelt advanced the holiday to the third instead of the last Thursday in November. The goal: to maximize the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Squawks of protest arose from turkey producers, the American Legion, calendar makers, states, counties and cities. In 1941 Congress adopted a joint resolution returning the holiday to the last Thursday, where it remains.

We’ve come a long way. Today’s traditional menu might have touches of, say, Chinese or Colombian cuisine. And retailers don’t need presidential help to kick off holiday sales well before Thanksgiving. But when we pull up to the table, let’s remember the history and meaning of the moment.