Another Thanksgiving is upon us. As your family gathers to give thanks, you may wonder who we have to thank for giving us this delicious holiday.
There were the Pilgrims, of course, who started things with the first Thanksgiving in 1621. You could argue credit goes to local Native Americans, who taught the Pilgrims farming tips that helped them survive their first harsh Massachusetts winter. Some say President Abraham Lincoln was responsible, because his 1863 proclamation revived the holiday.
And, of course, there’s Sarah Josepha Buell Hale.
No, seriously — a woman you’ve never heard of played a key role in you stuffing yourself every fourth Thursday of November. It was actually only one of several of her major contributions to our culture.
Here’s how it happened.
Hale was remarkable from the beginning. Born on a New Hampshire farm after the Revolutionary War, her parents had the then-radical belief that girls should receive the same education as boys. She was home-schooled, married at age 24, and was widowed at 35, wearing blackest mourning for the rest of her life.
Hale was also an accomplished writer. She published a book of poetry, then a novel. In 1837, she accepted the job that enabled her to make her mark on society. Hale became editor of a wildly popular magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book. It was the single most influential journal for much of the 19th century. On its pages, women learned how to dress — its color prints of the latest fashions were often cut out, framed, and hung in the family parlor in thousands of homes — how to cook, how to raise a family, and generally how to be a proper mid-Victorian lady.
She dutifully followed Queen Victoria’s lead and popularized white wedding gowns and Christmas trees on this side of the Atlantic. But Hale had some misses, too. She recommended applying brown wrapping paper soaked in vinegar to the forehead to remove wrinkles and believed pigeons were “about the only bird in New England worth cooking.”
But she got much more right than she got wrong. That includes Thanksgiving.
Hale first wrote in 1827, “Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, should be a national festival observed by all the people” on the same day.
She lobbied readers to petition then-President Zachary Taylor and state governors to support making it a holiday. Taylor passed the buck, saying it was up to the states to observe Thanksgiving at the time of their own choosing, which was why it was celebrated locally during the antebellum period everywhere from September to December.
Along the way, Hale filled the pages of Godey’s with recipes for roast turkey, different types of dressings, even sweet potato pie. That not only kept subscribers drooling, it played a big role in building public support for the holiday.
Her big break finally came in 1863, during the middle of the Civil War. The North won the crucial Battle of Gettysburg on July 3 and captured Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4. Those back-to-back victories turned the war’s tide in favor of the Union. Hale seized the moment.
She wrote to Lincoln, requesting a “National and fixed holiday” be held annually on the last Thursday of November. She recommended that day because Washington had designated it in his 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation. She also wrote stirring editorials encouraging the idea. On Oct. 3, Lincoln proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 26, as Thanksgiving Day, breathing new life into the tradition by having everyone observe it on the same day.
Hale wasn’t satisfied. She turned her attention to Congress, lobbying to make Thanksgiving a legal holiday. But she didn’t live to see it happen. Hale remained at the helm of Godey’s for 40 years before finally stepping down in 1877. She died two years later at age 91.
On the day after Christmas, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law a measure designating the fourth Thursday of November a federal holiday. Hale’s life mission was finally fulfilled.
I wrote at the beginning that Hale had several lasting claims to fame. In addition to popularizing Thanksgiving, white wedding dresses, and Christmas trees in the U.S., there’s a nursery rhyme she penned in 1830: “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Every time a family gathers to give thanks for the blessings they enjoy, and every time a parent teaches a toddler about the cute little animal with the snowy fleece that followed Mary everywhere she went, Hale’s legacy lives on.
Few people realize a quiet widow dressed in black from head to toe was responsible for them.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former broadcast journalist and government communicator. His weekly offbeat look at our forgotten past, “Holy Cow! History,” can be read at jmarkpowell.com.
