Thank Sara Hale for Thanksgiving
By Jacobs’ Librarians
Many Americans know Sara Josepha Hale as the author of the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb," but she was also largely responsible for Thanksgiving being declared a national holiday.
Everyone knows the story of the pilgrims and the Indians and the three-day feast to celebrate the pilgrims’ first harvest in the New World. Since the beginning of agriculture, harvests have been a time of celebration, so it is no wonder that in 1621 the pilgrims, who had barely survived that first year in America but had produced a bountiful harvest, felt the need to celebrate.
The celebrations continued to be held over the decades. Those regional Thanksgivings were declared in many states and on different days, and in 1777 the Continental Congress declared the first national day of Thanksgiving on Dec. 18.
The day was prompted by the winning of a battle that was considered the turning point of the American Revolution, not as a harvest celebration, and it was celebrated in the northern states only.
George Washington issued a general proclamation for a day of thanks in 1789, but few subsequent presidents proclaimed national days, leaving it to the governors of each state to do so.
Sara Josepha Hale was the editor of a woman’s magazine in the late nineteenth century called Godey’s Lady’s Book. Hale spent nearly 30 years campaigning for a national observance of Thanksgiving.
The November issue of her magazine was devoted to ideas for celebrating Thanksgiving and included editorials urging the federal government to establish the national holiday. She wrote letters to the governor of every state and territory and to the President.
In August 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving. But his proclamation occurred after a northern victory at Gettysburg. The southern states independently declared their own Thanksgiving.
Hale persisted, persuading the president that the country needed "to have the day of our annual Thanksgiving made a national and fixed Union Festival."
On Oct. 3, 1863, President Lincoln declared the second Thanksgiving Day, this one set aside as a day of "Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."
After Lincoln’s proclamation, each president would annually declare a national Thanksgiving Day. President Franklin Roosevelt tried moving the day to the third Thursday of the month to increase the Christmas shopping season.
It was in 1941 that Congress finally declared the fourth Thursday in November to be observed as Thanksgiving Day and a legal federal holiday.
If it were not for Sara Josepha Hale’s efforts, we might never have set aside a day for the whole country to celebrate Thanksgiving.
(This feature was written by a committee of IVCCs Jacob’s librarians.)
11/19/98 the Apache