As told by Lady Simmertown
A Prelude to Gratitude
Dear Readers,
Settle in with a warm beverage and your most luxurious shawl, for the tale of American Thanksgiving is a drama worthy of any Regency drawing room. The holiday that now thrives upon roasted fowl and familial theatrics did not begin as a charming annual affair. Its history is a procession of colonial calamities, presidential proclamations, economic persuasion, and one rather determined woman with a surprisingly powerful pen.
Let us take a graceful step backward in time and witness the birth and rebirth of this national ritual of gratitude.
Before It Was a Holiday: Survival, Not Celebration (1600s)
The earliest expressions of thanksgiving in North America were not feasts of abundance but humble acknowledgments of survival. In the early seventeenth century, colonists declared days of thanksgiving only when they were spared from disaster. There were no lavish tables, no familial reunions, only solemn prayers of relief.
In Virginia in 1610, a day of thanksgiving was held because the settlers had endured a period known as the Starving Time and managed not to perish entirely. In Plymouth in 1621, the famed harvest gathering stretched across three days, yet it was neither a national holiday nor an annual tradition. It was simply a season of respite after months of hardship, though later centuries would dress it up in nostalgic lace and romance it into something far grander than it was.
These early observances were sporadic and grim, called only when catastrophe temporarily relented.
Washington’s Attempt at Order: The First National Thanksgiving (1789)
After the American Revolution, the new republic was held together with more thread than certainty. President George Washington, recognizing the value of a shared national moment, issued a proclamation on October 3, 1789. He named Thursday, November 26, as a national day of public thanksgiving and prayer.
This single observance was intended to unite a country still trembling in its infancy. Yet it did not become a yearly affair. Washington set a precedent, but one that future presidents treated with varying enthusiasm. John Adams revived it on occasion. Thomas Jefferson refused it entirely, citing a strict separation between church and state.
The holiday, like the nation itself, was searching for consistency.
The Woman Who Would Not Be Ignored: Sarah Josepha Hale (1840s to 1863)
Enter Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, a magazine powerful enough to shape the domestic ideals of an entire generation. Beginning in the 1840s, Hale decided that the country needed a unifying annual Thanksgiving and she intended to see it established.
Her campaign was relentless in the most elegant way. She filled her pages with appeals for a national holiday, wrote persistent letters to governors, and petitioned five different presidents. She believed fervently that such a day would draw the nation together, especially as divisions deepened in the mid-nineteenth century.
Her persistence, patient and steady, finally found its audience.
Lincoln’s Gift to a Fractured Nation: A Permanent Date (1863)
In the autumn of 1863, with the American Civil War in full and terrible motion, President Abraham Lincoln recognized the profound longing for unity. On October 3, 1863, he issued a proclamation establishing a national Day of Thanksgiving to be observed on the last Thursday of November.
Lincoln envisioned the holiday as a binding thread, an annual moment in which a divided people might breathe, reflect, and remember their common humanity. From that year forward, Americans gathered each November to honor his decree, even as the nation continued to heal through Reconstruction and beyond.
For the next seventy-six years, Lincoln’s date held firm.
The Great Calendar Crisis: Roosevelt Rearranges November (1939 to 1941)
By the late 1930s, the Great Depression had left retailers desperately eager for any opportunity to lengthen the holiday shopping season. In 1939, November contained five Thursdays, placing Lincoln’s Thanksgiving on November 30. Store owners cried out that this left too little time for Christmas commerce.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt obliged them. On August 14, 1939, he announced that Thanksgiving would move one week earlier, landing on November 23, in hopes of boosting economic activity.
The reaction was immediate and dramatic. Twenty-three states adopted the new date, while twenty-two rejected it in favor of tradition. Two states chose both dates, their inhabitants stumbling through a November filled with conflicting schedules. Critics dubbed the new celebration Franksgiving and the country spent two years arguing about turkey and calendars with an enthusiasm usually reserved for politics.
The discord became so widespread that Congress finally intervened.
Congress Restores Harmony: The Fourth Thursday Forever (1941)
In December of 1941, just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress passed a resolution that would end the turmoil once and for all. Thanksgiving would henceforth occur on the fourth Thursday of November, regardless of how many Thursdays the month contained. Roosevelt signed the resolution on December 26 and the holiday became fixed in its modern place.
It was a rare moment of governmental agreement, prompted not by food nor by faith, but by widespread chaos and a desire for predictability in uncertain times.
The Ritual Evolves: From Piety to Performance
Once the date was firmly established, Thanksgiving grew into a lavish performance of gratitude. Gone were the days of fasting and austere prayer. Instead came feasts with turkeys of heroic proportions, ambitious side dishes, and family traditions treasured as much as they were contested.
The giving of thanks became an expression not only of gratitude but of American character. It was both earnest and theatrical, heartfelt and occasionally competitive, always woven with the promise of togetherness even when the realities of family dynamics suggested otherwise.
A Farewell Reflection
So, my dearest readers, when you gather this year around tables laden with warmth and indulgence, remember that Thanksgiving did not simply appear as a polished national treasure. It was born of colonial hardship, refined by Washington’s vision, championed by Sarah Josepha Hale’s unwavering persistence, sanctified by Lincoln’s longing for unity, disrupted by Roosevelt’s economic hopes, and ultimately stabilized by Congress in the quiet days of 1941.
It is a holiday with a history as layered as any feast and as dramatic as any scandal in the ton. A testament to resilience, reinvention, and the enduring need to pause and say that life, even in its most trying seasons, is still worthy of gratitude.
A Thanksgiving Note
My dearest readers, before you slip away to your own feasts and festivities, allow me to speak plainly from the heart. I am grateful for you. Every visit to my scandal sheets, every curious mind that wanders through my culinary histories, every kind word, every shared delight. You have turned this little corner of the world into a warm and sparkling salon, and I treasure your presence more than the flakiest pastry or the richest gravy.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. May your day be gentle, your table abundant, and your heart reminded of how deeply appreciated you truly are.
With all my affection,
Lady Simmertown
For the Skeptics and the Scholars
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863.” https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/thanksgiving-proclamation-1863
Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia. “George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789.” https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/thanksgiving-proclamation
National Park Service. “Lincoln and Thanksgiving.” https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/lincoln-and-thanksgiving.htm
U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian. “The Thanksgiving Holiday: Historical Highlights.” https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-Thanksgiving-holiday
History.com. “Why FDR Changed the Date of Thanksgiving.” https://www.history.com/news/franksgiving-fdr-moved-thanksgiving
Smithsonian Magazine. “The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-woman-who-saved-thanksgiving-79480698
Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Thanksgiving Day: United States Holiday.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thanksgiving-Day
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