A Day of Thanksgiving

A woman’s 40-year obsession lead to what we now celebrate as Thanksgiving Day. During the early 19th Century, women’s magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale wrote numerous editorials in Godey’s Lady’s Book, championing her cause to recognize a national day of thanksgiving.

Most U.S. citizens associate the holiday with the Pilgrims who traveled aboard the Mayflower to a new land that allowed them religious freedom. They set ground at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, on Dec. 11, 1620 and experienced a devastating winter that took many lives. By their first fall, they had lost 46 out of the original 102 people. It is believed that without the assistance of the native Indians, the remaining Pilgrims would not have survived their first year. In celebration of their bountiful harvest in 1621, the Pilgrims held a three-day harvest feast that included 91 Indians who had helped them.

Thanksgiving days were not annual holidays, but special days of fasting or thanksgiving set aside to praise God in response to the workings of Providence in their lives or in national or international affairs. Congregational meetings would be held, and it would usually end with a communal feast. The first official Pilgrim Thanksgiving in America would actually be celebrated in July 1623. About 50 years later, on June 29, 1676, a day of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the colonists to celebrate their good fortune, and recent victory over the “heathen natives”—which meant the Indians were not invited.

By October 1777, all 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration. President George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, but many in the colonies were opposed to it because they felt the hardships of a few Pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. President Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea of having a day of Thanksgiving.

This brings us back to Sarah Hale and her one-woman crusade to encourage a new nation to celebrate an annual day of thanksgiving. In 1827, she stated in her book, Northwood: “Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people.”

Northwood is regarded as the first important American novel by a woman. It dealt with the slavery issue and the mounting tensions between the northern and southern states. Hale hoped the spiritual dimension of Thanksgiving would help unify the country and prevent a civil war. She wrote: “There is a deep moral influence in these periodical seasons of rejoicing, in which whole communities participate. They bring out…the best sympathies in our natures.”

As hostilities continued to escalate between the North and South, she penned thousands of letters to governors and presidents to request a national holiday. Hale wrote in a 1959 editorial: “If every state would join in Union Thanksgiving on the 24th of this month, would it not be a renewed pledge of love and loyalty to the Constitution of the United States?”

Unfortunately, her efforts to prevent conflict were not realized, and it wasn’t until the winds of war swept over the country that Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863, after the Gettysburg battle. In the Proclamation, Lincoln stated: “In the midst of civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity…the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict.

“… I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

On Nov. 26, 1863, he issued the first annual Thanksgiving Day proclamation, which has been continued by every president to this day. In 1941, Congress sanctioned the fourth Thursday in November as a legal Thanksgiving Day holiday.

The U.S. and many other nations are again at war with an unseen enemy. It is a time when many families have loved ones fighting in a foreign land so that we can enjoy the bounties of peace and prosperity on the islands and other U.S. soil. We hope that you will take the time to remember the many things you are grateful for, and especially remember the brave men and women who are thousands of miles away and missing their families as they prepare to eat their Thanksgiving meal.

Even though Sarah Josepha Hale is better known for her kindergarten song, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” her accomplishment to get a war torn nation to pause and give thanks should be appreciated by all who sit down at the table to feast on this special day of thanksgiving.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They have consulted with over 400 businesses in 40 different industries, and can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)