Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library :: Closed Days

Thanksgiving

family gathered at dinner table, dressed nicely in the midst of eatingThe Library will be closed November 25-26 for Thanksgiving.


How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday

The year 1621 is the traditional first Thanksgiving that Americans recall as the founding of a national tradition. In reality there were many days and times of national thanksgiving. In 1777, for example, after the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga, Congress declared December 18, 1777 a day of national thanksgiving.

The custom of a November Thanksgiving was celebrated hit and miss by the individual states. In some respects it was viewed as a New Englander's tradition. As Abigail Adams mused to her husband in 1792:

Tis the first thanksgiving day that I have been at Home to commemorate for Nine Years. Scatterd and dispersed as our Family is, God only knows whether we shall ever all meet together again. Much of the pleasure and happiness resulting from these N. England Annual festivals is the family circles and connections which are brought together at these times . . .

Letter from Abigail to John Adams, December 4, 1792

During the Civil War, President Lincoln declared April 10, 1862 a day of thanksgiving after the victory at the Battle of Shiloh. Later, he declared August 6, 1863 a day of thanksgiving. And it is Lincoln that historians point to as the president who gave Thanksgiving, as we know it today, with its November observance, a national scope. He wanted to bolster the feeling of the union of the states over regionalism. In October 1863 he declared:

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and 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, tranquillity and Union.

It was a women's magazine editor, Sara Josepha Hale, who had urged Lincoln to establish this as a national tradition.

In 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the observance of Thanksgiving to the next to the last Thursday in November to accomodate a longer Christmas shopping season.

Library Materials about Thanksgiving President Abraham Lincoln with Major General John A. Mclernand

Search for books, videorecordings and other items in the Library: History of Thanksgiving Day -- or, perhaps, you prefer fiction about Thanksgiving.

Photo credit: Thanksgiving dinner in Neffsville, Pennsylvania, Nov 1942. Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-USW3-011882-D DLC; President Abraham Lincoln with Major General John A. Mclernand, Battle of Antietam, Oct 3, 1862, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.04326; Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress; "Plenty" by Andrew Magill - some rights reserved.