November 20, 2023 – THEME WEEK DAY 1

In honor of Thanksgiving this week, we’re kicking off a mini Thanksgiving Theme Week! Who better to start off with than the mother of Thanksgiving, Sarah Josepha Hale. She was the editor of the most widely circulated magazine in the period before the Civil War, Godey’s Lady’s Book. She also wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. But she also may be the person most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the U.S.
Thanksgiving had been celebrated mostly in New England. But each state scheduled its own date, some as early as November and others as late as January, and it was virtually unknown in the South. Thanksgiving traditions varied from region to region as well. A typical New England Thanksgiving included a raffle on Thanksgiving Eve (with geese or turkeys as prizes), a shooting match on Thanksgiving morning (using turkeys or chickens as targets), and church services. Their feast included some familiar dishes, like turkey and pumpkin pie, as well as some not-so- familiar things like pigeon pie.
Hale was born in New Hampshire, so had grown up celebrating the holiday. She often wrote editorials and articles about Thanksgiving, believing a unifying measure could ease the growing tensions between the North and South. She hoped that a national Thanksgiving holiday would foster the “moral and social reunion of Americans”. Hale was persistent, advocating for the holiday for 17 years by writing to members of Congress, every governor of every territory and state, along with presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. Finally Abraham Lincoln supported legislation to establish a national Thanksgiving holiday in 1863. It was considered a unifying day after the hardship of the Civil War. Before the addition of Thanksgiving, the only national holidays celebrated were Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day.
The idea of a national Thanksgiving had been around since the early days of the republic. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress issued several days of thanks in honor of military victories, and George Washington called for a national day of thanks in 1789 to celebrate the end of the war and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. It wasn’t made a federal holiday until 1942, when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law. Learn more here.