You're watching FreeSchool! If you live in the United States, you have probably already heard the story of the first Thanksgiving—how the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and held a feast of Thanksgiving after their first good harvest in the New World.
But how did a Massachusetts harvest festival in 1621 become a modern national holiday? In the seventeenth century days of thanksgiving were religious holidays, days of fasting and prayer, giving thanks to God for things like rain ending a drought or success in battle, as well as for good harvests.
In 1777, Congress proclaimed a day of thanksgiving in all 13 colonies to commemorate the victory of American forces over the British at the Battle of Saratoga. Another day of thanksgiving was celebrated in November of 1782 after the British House of Commons voted to end the Revolutionary War, and George Washington later proclaimed yet another one in the first year of his presidency.
John Adams and James Madison also set days of thanksgiving, but no president after Madison would do the same for fifty years. Throughout the 1800s, several states adopted a yearly Thanksgiving holiday.
These days of thanksgiving were celebrated on a different day in every state, and remained mostly a Northern tradition. In 1846 Sarah Josepha Hale, magazine editor and the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" began a campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Over the course of seventeen years she published articles and wrote letters to governors, senators, and five consecutive presidents, urging the creation of a national day of thanksgiving each year. In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November to be a day of Thanksgiving, hoping that it would help heal the wounds of their divided nation.
Thanksgiving became only the third National Holiday to be observed in the United States, alongside Washington's Birthday and Independence Day. Thanksgiving remained on the last Thursday in November until the 1930s.
In 1933 there were five Thursdays in November, and some business owners asked Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president at the time, to move Thanksgiving up a week so people would have more time to shop for Christmas. He refused.
The next time there were five Thursdays in November was 1939, and Roosevelt was still president. This time when business owners asked him to move the holiday, he agreed, and issued a presidential proclamation saying that Thanksgiving should be the fourth Thursday of November.
Some people really disliked the change since they thought it was just intended to help people make more money. Some states' governors even refused to change the date of their state's Thanksgiving celebrations until 1941, when Congress passed a law saying that Thanksgiving should be on the fourth Thursday, bringing everyone's celebrations back to the same day.
