As the story goes, Thanksgiving has been a national tradition for as long as the nation has existed.
According to the National Archives Museum, the first Thanksgiving took place in the fall of 1621. In reality, the majority of the story surrounding that first celebration at Plymouth was relatively fictionalized, and its historical importance has become more legend than fact. Bamsi reports that the second Thanksgiving wasn’t celebrated until 1623, to commemorate the end of a drought season.
In 1789, amidst the Revolutionary War, President George Washington was the first commander in chief to declare Thursday, November 26 a national day of Thanksgiving, according to the National Archives, making it the first public celebration of the holiday. However, it wasn’t an official holiday at the time. After George Washington’s declaration of the holiday, it was celebrated in the following years, but there was no official date.
A date was finally set by Abraham Lincoln in 1863; in a declaration transcribed by the Obama White House Archives, he marked the last Thursday in November as a celebration of Thanksgiving and Gratitude for the entire United States. Thanksgiving was celebrated on that day for almost a hundred years.
That is, until President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a slight change to the official date. According to the Center for Legislative Archives, the last Thursday in November in 1939 fell on the final day of the month, and Roosevelt was concerned that the holiday would shorten the holiday shopping season, and damage the economy while it recovered from The Great Depression. So, he issued a proclamation for Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the second to last Thursday instead, and 32 states followed suit.
In subsequent years, two dates were celebrated across the country for Thanksgiving, which turned out to be confusing. So in 1941, Congress decided to set one specific date for Thanksgiving, and on October 6, the House passed a resolution that put the holiday back on the last Thursday of the month. The resolution was quickly updated by the Senate, which changed the date to the fourth Thursday of the month, in order to accommodate for years when the month has five Thursdays. Still with us? Good.
After finally agreeing on an official date for Thanksgiving, President Roosevelt signed the resolution in December of 1941. From that point on, Thanksgiving was an official Federal Holiday, to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
So now when you’re enjoying your Thanksgiving turkey, you can remember the long and convoluted history of the reason you’re eating the turkey on that specific day. And you can recite it to the family members who won’t stop asking when you’re having kids.
