While driving to the west side yesterday, I learned that a major driver for Thanksgiving Day was a woman I hadn’t heard of before- Sarah Josepha Hale, a New Englander who began writing to support herself and her five children after the death of her husband.
And write she did- from a novel that detailed a Thanksgiving feast (Thanksgiving used to be a holiday observed mainly in New England), to becoming editor of an influential magazine in the 19th century- Godey’s Lady’s Book. For decades, she used her influence to campaign for a national Thanksgiving Day holiday, which became even more paramount for her when the north and south were on the brink of Civil War.
Sound familiar?
I had long considered Thanksgiving primarily a family holiday, but did I ever consider or know that its very union could depend on it?
I can sympathize with Hale. She worked for a radical idea at the time- establishing a holiday whose theme is gratitude. She did it at a time when women weren’t allowed to vote (and to be fair, she did not support the suffrage movement). She wrote to five presidents and, during a time of stratification by gender and skin color, worked within the system.
Her efforts slowly paid off. By 1854, 30 states and U.S. territories established Thanksgiving celebrations, although at different times- from October to January. Thanksgiving was a piecemeal celebration; the union hadn’t come on board. Nine years later, in 1863, weeks before Hale’s 75th birthday, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday.
But Hale wasn’t done. She wanted Thanksgiving Day proclaimed by an act of Congress. She wouldn’t live to see it, but on November 26, 1941, weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor that led to the Americans officially entering World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the bill into law. It codified Thanksgiving as a national holiday that would occur annually on the fourth Thursday of November.
The holiday we think started in 1621 (or 1565 if we follow the first Thanksgiving mass in St. Augustine, Florida), wasn’t codified as a national holiday until 1941. It is, much like today, an attempt to hold, protect, and form a “more perfect union.” It is just as relevant today as it was during the Civil War and World War II.
Hale largely dropped from the spotlight, but the holiday she worked decades to recognize nationally has become one of America’s quintessential holidays. The strife that came during its proclamation and passage into law can provide lessons for how to deal with the strife in our country today.
