|
|
 |
 |
|
Giving Thanks: Women Move to Create a Holiday
by Catherine Clinton
Independent Scholar
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
| President Kennedy Pardons a Thanksgiving Turkey, 1963 (Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library) |
Thanksgiving Message from Calvin Coolidge, November 1923 (GLC08026) |
|
Thanksgiving stands as one of the most American of holidays,
an autumnal ritual fixed in the imagination as honoring
the piety and perseverance of the nation’s earliest
arrivals during colonial days. But what were the origins
of this quintessentially American tradition? And how and
when did the observance become an official part of our
national identity and holiday calendar?
Harvest festivals have been recorded from ancient to modern
times, from the Greeks honoring the goddess Demeter with
a nine-day Festival to the Jewish celebration of the Feast
of the Tabernacles. And from ancient to modern times days
of thanksgiving have followed a military triumph. But
Thanksgiving celebrations on the North American continent
may be more directly traced to European refugees offering
prayers for survival, such as the minister who gave “God
thanks for our happy metinge & safe aryval into the
country, ” when two ships with British colonists
reached Georges Island off the Maine coast in 1607.
Perhaps the idea of an annual event to honor survival
in the New World originated in Virginia, along the James
River, where the Berkley Hundred colony held a religious
service on December 4, 1619 to commemorate “the
day of our ship’s arrival” and proclaimed
the date would be “yearly and perpetually kept holy
as a day of thanksgiving to the Almighty God.” Maybe
Americans would associate the first Thanksgiving with
Virginia if this settlement had not been wiped out by
Indian massacre. As a result of that massacre, these first
practitioners of the custom literally died out before
the Pilgrims landed far to the north of them near Plymouth
Rock -- and it was the Pilgrims who became known as the
originators of Thanksgiving.
The History of Plimoth Plantation (which appeared
in 1856) includes a colorful account of the meal shared
by Pilgrims and Indians in 1621. It was described as a
three-day feast of lobsters, clams, bass, corn, green
vegetables, and dried fruits, as well as a “great
store of Wild turkies.” Many of the New England
colonists began to commemorate both their survival and
their harvest by a religious ceremony. The Reverend John
Cotton commented, “We sometimes upon extraordinary
occasions…do set apart a day of humiliation or upon
special mercies we set apart a day of Thanksgiving." 1
For the next one hundred and fifty years, Thanksgiving
was celebrated in Northern colonies as part of religious
observance. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire and Connecticut all had laws against “Game,
Sport, Play or Recreation…on pain that every Person
so Offending shall for every offence Forfeit the Sum of
Ten Shillings." 2
Certainly days of thanksgiving were also associated with
military victories, and Americans along the Eastern seaboard
joyfully came together on December 18, 1777 for a day
of “Thanksgiving and Praise” in the wake of
the Continental Army’s victory over the British
in October of that year. This was the first holiday officially
celebrated in all thirteen states -- and such a celebration
would not happen again until the time when the American
victory at Yorktown, November 28, 1782, was declared a
day of national thanksgiving.
In 1789 Congress debated whether the federal government
should establish a uniform day of thanksgiving, or leave
the decision up to individual states -- as had been done
for over a century. On October 3, 1789, President George
Washington issued his own proclamation, directing Americans
to celebrate and give thanks on Thursday, November 26.
As a symbolic gesture, the new president sent money to
supply debtors in the New York City jail with provisions,
while he attended church services, thus beginning the
American custom of local charity associated with Thanksgiving.
Washington’s proclamation did not transform this
tradition into any official national holiday, although
New England states especially maintained annual observances
with a Thursday day of prayer and family homecoming each
fall. But the idea of a permanent, national day of Thanksgiving
became a dream of one of the most influential women in
the antebellum era -- Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s
Lady’s Book. (Under Hale's guidance, this popular
magazine for home and family grew from a readership of
roughly 40,000 into one with a circulation of over 150,000.)
Sarah Josepha Hale was born into a modest New England
family at the end of the eighteenth century, and enjoyed
her status as a young matron with a growing family. Every
November her family gathered to celebrate the Thanksgiving
holiday with a groaning sideboard of Yankee fare, often
called “turkey with all the trimmings.” When
her husband died and left his widow with five young children,
Hale turned her talents to writing and became famous for
one of her children’s verses -- “Mary Had
a Little Lamb.” Her first novel, Northwood,
which appeared in 1827, included an entire chapter devoted
to the significance and description of Thanksgiving traditions.
When Hale later became the editor of the most influential
periodical in the antebellum era, she campaigned to make
the third Thursday in November a national holiday. She
explained, “Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July,
should be considered a national festival and observed
by all our people." 3 Year
after year, Hale wrote to the governor of each state,
to congressmen and senators, and to the White House, urging
official government recognition of this celebration. Yet
Hale was unsuccessful; localities and states continued
to declare thanksgiving days, but no national agreement
emerged.
During this period, state-decreed days of thanksgiving
were most common in the territories and new states. For
settlers on the way West, the recollection of holidays
past might invoke homesickness, but they might also prompt
local celebration. In California, Oregon, and other territories,
Thanksgiving holidays were proclaimed even before statehood.
On the first Thanksgiving Day in Nebraska (in 1854) a
local paper reported, “Although we have, as in all
new countries, comparatively little to be thankful for,
we have sufficient to inspire our gratitude and blessing."
4
By1855, the fourth Thursday of November was observed as
Thanksgiving by fourteen states (while two others selected
the third Thursday for celebration). 5
In 1858 one contemporary estimated that upwards of 10,000
people had left New York City to spend the holiday in
New England with kin. 6
This special day braided together a number of family and
cultural customs -- perhaps even the first traffic jams.
With Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of war
in 1861, the appeal of an annual homecoming, when a family
might gather together, became even more poignant. In September1863,
Sarah Josepha Hale penned an editorial in which she wrote,
“Would it not be better that the proclamation that
appoints Thursday the 26th of November (1863) as the day
of Thanksgiving for the people of the United State of
America, should, in the first instance, emanate from the
President of the Republic?” Hale appealed directly
to President Lincoln; yet when Secretary of State William
Seward replied on September 29 that her letter was receiving
official attention, Hale perhaps did not become overly
hopeful. She had, after all, thus far written to six Presidents,
to no avail.
But with hundreds of thousands of soldiers away from home,
and with a president attuned to the mood of the nation,
Lincoln issued a proclamation in 1863 that Thanksgiving
would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
In a nod to historic precedent, he made the proclamation
on the very same October 3rd date on which Washington
had proffered his own proclamation more than seventy years
before. Lincoln put on his bravest face when he suggested
in the middle of a war “of unequaled magnitude and
severity” that “harmony has prevailed everywhere,
except in the theater of military conflict." 7
The president stressed abundance and unity, invoking memories
of holidays past, and striking a chord with the war-torn
Union .
From its somber origins during Civil War days, Thanksgiving
evolved into a multi-faceted celebration. Certainly the
neighborhood revelry, which began in New York City in
the 1840s, transformed the holiday into an elaborate commercial
gala. As a witness described it in 1881: “About
150 persons were in coaches or on horseback, all in fancy
costumes and many of them such as to create much merriment
among the crowds that flocked to see them." 8
The festivities began to rival Mardi Gras or Mummer’s
parades on New Year’s Day, and in 1921, Gimbel’s
Department Store in Philadelphia sponsored its first Thanksgiving
parade. Macy’s of Manhattan transformed the day’s
events into a patriotic extravaganza in which Uncle Sam
first appeared in balloon form (several feet high) in
1938.
College footballers often chose Thanksgiving Day for the
Big Game. Families attended games and -- once television
was available, viewed games without attending -- before
gathering round their turkey dinners. The holiday was
secularized during the last decades of the century, and
by the twentieth century, costumed festivals honoring
the Pilgrims became themes of elaborate grade-school pageants
-- an effective way to “Americanize” immigrants.
These annual activities showcased Puritan values and Yankee
customs, promoting civic folk rituals.
During the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt a controversy
developed over when to date the holiday, which presidential
proclamation had traditionally set as the last Thursday
of the month. In 1939 business interests lobbied successfully
to shift the holiday to an earlier date. F.D.R. selected
November 23 to cater to demands for a longer Christmas
shopping season. 9 Protests
raged, as satirist Ogden Nash quipped. “Thanksgiving,
like Ambassadors, Cabinet officers and others smeared
with political ointment, depends for its existence on
Presidential appointment.” To squelch ongoing battles,
Roosevelt signed a bill in 1941 designating that ever
after, the fourth Thursday in November would be America’s
official Thanksgiving.
SOURCES
Appelbaum, Diana Karter. Thanksgiving (New York:
Facts on File, 1984).
Entrikin, Isabella Webb. Sarah Josepha Hale and Godey’s
Lady Book (Lancaster, PA: Lancaster Press, 1946).
Finely, Ruth E. The Lady of Godey’s: Sarah Josepha
Hale (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1931).
Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale
and the Tradition of Nineteenth Century Women Editors
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1995).
www.plimoth.org/visit/what/exhibit.asp
FOOTNOTES
- Appelbaum, p. 31
- Appelbaum, p. 36
- Finley, p. 196
- Appelbaum, p. 122
- Entrikin p. 115. Thanksgiving was recognized in twenty-one states by 1846-but not always held on a Thursday in November.
- Appelbaum, p. 76
- Finley, p. 202-203.
- Appelbaum, p.188
- Appelbaum, p. 235
| For more information
about Thanksgiving, Sarah Josepha Hale, and
other topics mentioned in this article, visit
our Additional
Resources Page |
|
|
|
|
|
