I often have the opportunity to listen to a person I know who always repeats facts that he thinks are blowing your mind. He truly believes that he is destroying your entire worldview with each new fact. When in reality, you have either already heard it and been unimpressed or it is just not true. Around Thanksgiving, this individual loves to tell me about how Thanksgiving was started by Abraham Lincoln for a victory in a battle in the Civil War and before that there was no Thanksgiving. He claims that Thanksgiving has nothing to do with the first commonly recognized Thanksgiving and other Thanksgiving events.
I try to explain to this person that in 1777 George Washington declared a national day of Thanksgiving after winning the battle of Saratoga and that, even before then, many people had a feast of Thanksgiving for good harvests. Native Americans had been doing it for a long time. Lincoln did implement the annual holiday of Thanksgiving after hearing about the need for such a day from Sarah Hale, the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. She had been writing to U.S. Presidents since 1846 asking them to implement an official national day of Thanksgiving, much like one that many people celebrated on their own after a good harvest which had been going on for years. Abe Lincoln thought this would help the country heal during the Civil War and in 1863 he instituted the official Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday of November. Just because a government creates a holiday for something it does not mean that it never existed before then. Here is the official proclamation from Lincoln:
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
If this person wants to be more technical then Thanksgiving as we celebrate it wasn’t implemented until 1941 when congress set the holiday at the fourth Thursday in November after a short stint at the third Thursday to help the economy with a longer shopping season. As always mission unaccomplished, my mind is not blown.