Cover image via Wikimedia Commons.

Well, it’s the last hurrah of our November gratitude challenge. This is the final weekend of our sale on the “It is Well With My Soul” Gratitude Journals, including having them available for $10 a piece when you buy 5 or more, so get your Christmas shopping in now.

I heard something about the real first Thanksgiving this week that I found very moving. Many assume this tradition goes back to the 1600s to the time of the pilgrims, but Thanksgiving the way we celebrate it today is actually much newer than that. And the woman responsible for its official creation has a story of persistence that we should all aspire to.

You already know the work of Sarah Josepha Hale, but you don’t know that you do. She is the writer of the poem that we now know as “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. It was from a poetry collection that she published in 1829. Not long before that, an abolitionist novel she had written earned her a post as the editor of a Ladies Magazine.

Her position as editor and primary contributor to that magazine, and later to the Godey’s Lady’s Book, provided a platform for her to be vocal about the many causes that mattered to her–from the completion of a monument to commemorate the battle at Bunker Hill to the preservation of Mount Vernon. The subject she seemed to come back to the most was a passionate desire that Thanksgiving be declared a national holiday instead of the regional celebrations that happened at various dates up to that point.

She believed that Thanksgiving would be an opportunity to showcase and remember the core American values we shared such as religious devotion, connection to the land, recognition of heritage, and commitment to hard work.

She petitioned leaders throughout the country to join in her efforts to set aside the last Thursday in November as a national day to give thanks, but was met with rejection at every turn. Undeterred, she would spend each November focusing the content of her magazine back on the topic and began to encourage her readers to petition their representatives as well.

“It is a festival which will never become obsolete,” she said in an editorial in 1837, “for it cherishes the best affections of the heart – the social and domestic ties. It calls together the dispersed members of the family circle, and brings plenty, joy and gladness to the dwellings of the poor and lowly.”

An article from the Hudson Institute described her motivations this way:

As a religious matter, Hale saw Thanksgiving as embodying a founding principle of the United States: freedom of worship. Although she sometimes referred to the day as a Christian tradition, she recognized that Thanksgiving was open to people of all faiths. She was intrigued by the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, and often cited it as one of the roots of the American holiday.

For Hale, Thanksgiving, with its emphasis on family reunions and a grand meal, fell into the feminine sphere. Thanksgiving reflected, too, what she saw as the generous spirit of the American people and she encouraged readers to remember the needy on the holiday.

Her reasoning for having the holiday at the end of November was that it was after the “war of politics” or election season was over and could be left behind for the year. She chose a Thursday so that an extravagant meal could be prepared and not preclude the opportunity for a traditional Sunday dinner a couple of days later.

Slowly, cities and states began to adopt the suggested celebration “emanating from our Lady’s Book”, but Sarah wanted it to be a national holiday that would unite people across all the varied parts of the country. She wrote to President Zachary Taylor and was refused. She wrote to President Franklin Pierce and was refused. Presidents Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan also declined her petitions.

For more than 25 years, Sarah Josepha Hale persisted in publicly expressing her desire that Thanksgiving become a chance for national unity. She even published recipes for pumpkin pie and roast turkey and things that had become regional favorites of the feast in her magazine and continued to write to politician after politician about the value of this celebration as one worthy of national recognition.

Finally, in the most divided of times, one president caught her vision of unity. Just five days after receiving her spirited entreaty, President Abraham Lincoln issued his proclamation declaring a national day of Thanksgiving for the last Thursday of each November.

The proclamation was issued just 3 months after the Battle of Gettysburg, which had seen the devastating loss of 27% of the Union’s fighting men and 37% of the Confederates. Grief hung heavy in the national air, but in his proclamation,

Lincoln catalogued the blessings for which Americans could be grateful: peace with foreign nations, expanding borders, a growing population, farms, mines and industry that were producing well. Lincoln was reminding Americans, North and South, that the war would eventually end. He was asking them to look beyond the current horrors to a better day, when the country “is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.” It was a profoundly hopeful message, reminding the American people of the nation’s capacity for renewal (Hudson Institute, 2022).

And we still come together on that day, hopefully clinging to that hope for renewal and gratitude at unseen blessings even now. All this because one woman had a vision for something and would not let it go despite years of incessant obstacles and relentless rejection.

Author Melanie Kirkpatrick said that this long-ago lady editor is “an invisible presence at every table” as we sit down to our Thanksgiving feasts 161 years after her persistence finally paid off. Remember Sarah Josepha Hale this Thanksgiving and remember that the doors that have closed to you might just need a little more knocking before they’ll open in a way you never imagined.