est. 1863

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Do you know the story behind why we celebrate this holiday?

Thanksgiving is a public holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States. Originating as a harvest festival, Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789 after Congress requested a proclamation by George Washington. It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.

The event that many Americans call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. This feast lasted three days and was attended by numerous Native Americans and Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings,” or days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as a military victory or the end of a drought.

On October 6, 1941, both houses of the United States Congress passed a joint resolution fixing the traditional last Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942. However, in December of the same year the Senate passed an amendment to the resolution that required Thanksgiving be observed on the fourth Thursday of November, which was usually the last Thursday. The amendment also passed the House, and on December 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed this bill, making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal law for the first time and fixing it as the fourth Thursday in November.