Real Americans Eat Turkey!The Making of American Thanksgiving Traditions
What are your Thanksgiving traditions?
Governor William Bradford’s 1623 Proclamation of a Thanksgiving
Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.
Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
--William BradfordYe Governor of Ye Colony
Revolutionary Era Sermon Titles• Liberty of conscience; or, No king but Christ, in his church: : a sermo
n, preached at Dartmouth-Hall, November 30th, 1775; being the day appointed by the Honourable Congress of the province of New-Hampshire, to be observed as a general thanksgiving throughout that province.
• The Divine goodness displayed, in the American Revolution: : a sermon, preached in New-York, December 11th, 1783.
• Thoughts on the French Revolution. : A sermon, delivered November 20, 1794: being the day of annual thanksgiving.
• The grand era of ruin to nations from foreign influence. : A discourse, delivered before the Congregational Society in Berkley, Nov. 26, 1812.
• Thoughts on universal peace : a sermon, delivered on Thursday, January 18, 1816, the day of national thanksgiving for the restoration of peace
Civil War Era Thanksgiving Sermons
• The South: Her Peril and Her Duty. A Discourse delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, on Thursday, November 29,1860.
• War a discipline. A sermon preached in Calvary church, San Francisco, on Thanksgiving day, November 24, 1864.
“Should not the women of America haveone festival in whose rejoicings they canfully participate?” Sarah Josepha Hale
First Army-Navy Football Game, 1890
“Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given. It is a holiday granted by the State and the nation to see a game of football.” --New York Herald
October 2, 1933 Dear Mr. President: Thanksgiving, this year, according to the usual custom, would fall upon November 30th, the last Thursday in November, which would leave but twenty shopping days before Christmas.
It is an established fact that Christmas buying begins vigorously every year in the retail stores the day following Thanksgiving and that the Thanksgiving to Christmas Period is the busiest retail period of the whole year.
The Downtown Association of Los Angeles feels that Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of 1864 setting aside a day for Thanksgiving to be the 4th or last Thursday in November of each year can be carried out to the letter by designating in your Thanksgiving Proclamation this year, November 23rd, the fourth Thursday in November as the day of Thanksgiving.
You will appreciate the importance that an additional week incorporated in this great holiday season will have upon the distribution activities of the entire United States and the added impetus that will be given thereby to the efforts of the administration and the N.R.A. to increase employment and purchasing power.
The Downtown Association of Los Angeles respectfully requests your consideration of this practical suggestion, believing that your approval would have the deep appreciation of the merchants of the entire country.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt The White House Washington, D.C.
Your Excellency,
Your recent decision to change the date of our Thanksgiving Day has just taken effect here at Pratt Institute. Our directors announced that our school vacation would begin on the twenty-third of November and last until the twenty-sixth because New York, being your home state, is abiding by your decision. However, where I come from, Connecticut, they'll be observing it on the thirtieth of November as usual. Really, this situation makes my heart ache because I love our Thanksgiving Holidays as much if not a bit more than our Christmas Holidays.
Oh, I've missed one other Thanksgiving at home with my parents because I was away at college and too far away to get home to celebrate with them and I didn't like being away at that time either but I see its going to happen again.
I would really like to know just why you did change the date, my curiosity has been aroused.You probably won't see or hear of this letter because you are so busy however, it's been nice writing you about the situation.
Respectfully yours, (Miss) Eleanor Lucy Blydenburgh
