The first proclamations from the desk of President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding thanksgiving came and went with the usual notice—which, by the 1930s, was not much. It had become almost a foregone conclusion that come October or November, the president would issue a proclamation for the last Thursday in November—as expected. Shortly after, individual states’ governors would issue their own thanksgiving proclamations for their respective states, citing the same day the president had chosen—also as expected.
Technology had increased the White House’s ability to communicate more regularly and more directly with the American public, and President Roosevelt made good use of these developments. Warren G. Harding had installed the first radio in the White House. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, became the first president to ever broadcast live from the commander in chief’s residence. Beginning in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took presidential radio addresses to an entirely new level with his “Fireside Chats.”
Roosevelt used the chats to speak “directly” to Americans who were gathered around their own radios throughout the nation. Chats sometimes focused on specific topics, such as banking, the Recovery Act or congressional developments, the Works Progress Administration, or the Farm Security Administration. The tone and tenor of the talks were often designed to be reassuring as much as informative.
On November 24, 1938, Thanksgiving Day, Roosevelt broadcasted from what was known as the “Little White House”—his southern retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia. He relaxed in a quaint cottage in the pines while there, often with family and friends. After contracting polio in 1921, the president found swimming in the area’s mineral pools to be rejuvenating and soothing. Roosevelt’s thanksgiving proclamation that year mentioned George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, stating that the observance of the holiday “was consecrated when George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in the first year of his presidency.” He finished by acknowledging growing trouble in Europe. “In the time of our fortune,” Roosevelt wrote, “it is fitting that we offer prayers for unfortunate people in other lands who are in dire distress at this our Thanksgiving Season.”
Live from Warm Springs, Roosevelt brought Americans into his family’s thanksgiving celebration, sharing their joy and activities. He also spoke of new developments at Warm Springs itself, including the recent establishment of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. “This Thanksgiving Day we have much to be thankful for,” Roosevelt said during his chat, sharing that he had received many telegrams on the occasion, including one from actor and comedian Eddie Cantor, who wrote, “I am thankful that I can live in a country where our leaders sit down on Thanksgiving Day to carve up a turkey instead of a Nation.”
Technology continued its march forward and was on grand display that spring during the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, which opened on April 30. “The World of Tomorrow” was the slogan of the fair, which focused solidly on the future. Albert Einstein attended, presenting a speech on cosmic rays. The monolithic Trylon—more than six hundred feet tall—towered over an eighteen-story globe known as the Perisphere, which offered visitors the chance to view a model of a future city called “Democracity.” A seven-foot-tall robot named Elektro prowled the fairgrounds as well. Dupont debuted the first-ever nylon pantyhose, a welcome, sturdy replacement to wool and silk. The firms Westinghouse, General Electric, Crosley, and RCA, ever at one another’s throats, each debuted a fascinating new appliance called the television. President Roosevelt attended the fair as well, and his speech to the nation was broadcast over RCA’s fledgling station, W2XBS—which later became WNBC—making him the first president to appear on television. At the time, there were an estimated one hundred to two hundred televisions tuned in, netting Roosevelt a probable audience of a whopping one thousand.
Later that year, the news grew darker. In September, Germany invaded Poland. Declarations of war followed, thrusting Europe into World War II. That fall Roosevelt made news for an unexpected reason, and thanksgiving became slightly more controversial.
The complaints had been stacking up for a good chunk of Roosevelt’s presidency. As the holiday of thanksgiving had continued to evolve, so had its association with the Christmas shopping season. That link had grown even stronger as the recently established parades in Philadelphia and New York literally welcomed Santa Claus to the season and physically led shoppers to department stores on St. Nick’s heels.
In 1939, the expected Thanksgiving—the last Thursday of November—was to fall on November 30, just as it had in 1933, during Roosevelt’s first year in office. That year, the National Retail Dry Goods Association had lobbied the president hard, urging him to proclaim thanksgiving seven days earlier, on November 23. Other merchants and manufacturers joined the movement. John G. Bullock, of Bullock’s department stores in Los Angeles, wrote to Senator William McAdoo, making perhaps the self-interested claim that moving up the date would impact “distribution activities across the entire United States,” and the potential to “increase employment and purchasing power.” Other retailers also pled with the president to move up the date. However, in 1933, Roosevelt refused. The New York Times reported that, among other issues, such a change would “disarrange football games which are scheduled for Thanksgiving.”
Now, six years later, the National Retail Dry Goods Association reemerged with their rallying cry. In an attempt to pacify merchants and retailers, the White House tossed out numerous ideas. At one point during the back-and-forth, Roosevelt even suggested moving the holiday to a Monday in the middle of November. He consulted with politicians, clergy, and other experts, among them Columbia University professor James T. Shotwell from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Shotwell did not share the concerns of the retailers, but rather hoped the country might “recapture the spirit [of Thanksgiving] through which the emphasis would be placed on spiritual rather than material things.”
Retailer lobbying started early in 1939 and showed little sign of abating. That summer, Roosevelt announced at a press conference that rather than the last Thursday of November—November 30—he would instead declare the previous Thursday, the twenty-third, to be the national day of thanks. When making the announcement, Roosevelt observed that Thanksgiving Day “seems to be the only holiday that is not provided by law, nationally.” To support this decision, he offered that the holiday, prior to the Civil War, had been a “moveable feast . . . so there is nothing sacred about it.”
This, of course, had been Hale’s nightmare. She had long predicted—and feared—that without an act of Congress, mere convenience would upend her hard-won tradition. She did not intend her favored feast to be a movable one.
The press erupted at Roosevelt’s news, and while retailers rejoiced, numerous sectors of society panicked. School vacations would be affected. Football coaches were up in arms about the disruption of long-held traditional battles. New York University’s Board of Athletic Control wrote with concern about the school’s annual football bout with Fordham held in Yankee Stadium on Thanksgiving Day. Calendar printers, especially, were apoplectic. “I am afraid your change for Thanksgiving is going to cause the calendar manufacturers untold grief,” wrote John Taylor of the Budget Press in Salem, Ohio.
And while some larger businesses claimed they would benefit from the move, other entrepreneurs felt differently. “The small storekeeper would prefer leaving Thanksgiving Day where it belongs,” wrote Charles Arnold, of Arnold’s Men’s Shop Inc. “If the large department stores are over-crowded during the shorter shopping period before Christmas, the overflow will come, naturally, to the neighborhood store.” Owners of smaller shops had been waiting years for a late thanksgiving to give them a boost, he continued, writing, “we are sadly disappointed at your action.”
Some citizens took a lighter approach:
Mr. President:
I see by the paper this morning where you want to change Thanksgiving Day to November 23 of which I heartily approve. Thanks.
Now, there are some things that I would like done and would appreciate your approval:
Have Sunday changed to Wednesday;
Have Monday’s to be Christmas;
Have it strictly against the Will of God to work on Tuesday;
Have Thursday to be Pay Day with time and one-half for overtime;
Require everyone to take Friday and Saturday off for a fishing trip down the Potomac.
With these in view and hoping you will give me some consideration at your next Congress, I remain,
Yours very truly
Shelby O. Bennett
Now it fell to the governors of the individual states to support Roosevelt’s new date . . . or not.
President Roosevelt stuck to his guns, going so far as to designate November 21 of the following year, 1940—the third Thursday of the month, rather than the last—as Thanksgiving Day. This was most likely done to pacify the calendar industry, giving them a head start on their publishing schedule.
Though the 1939 date had already been announced to the press that summer, Roosevelt publicly issued what had already become a rather contentious proclamation on Halloween of that year, saying, as always, how much there was to be thankful for: “As a Nation we are deeply grateful that in a world of turmoil we are at peace with all countries, and we especially rejoice in the strengthened bonds of our friendship with the other peoples of the Western Hemisphere.”
He again paid tribute to George Washington’s 1789 proclamation, but this time omitted Abraham Lincoln. “It is fitting,” Roosevelt wrote, “that we should continue this hallowed custom and select a day in 1939 to be dedicated to reverent thoughts of thanksgiving.”
For the first time in anyone’s memory, half the state governors defied the president and issued proclamations for the “original,” anticipated date—the thirtieth. Mississippi, Texas, and Colorado observed both the twenty-third and the thirtieth. A Bryan, Texas, newspaper wrote on November 30, “Americans have reason enough to make use of two Thanksgiving days.” In an article titled “Thanksgiving Day Mixup Has Extended Right into Roosevelt’s Own Family,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram listed the different days that various members of Roosevelt’s own extended family would be celebrating. The choices were largely dependent on where those Roosevelts were located and what their own traditions were. Either way, either day, Americans celebrated the holiday(s) in the usual fashion. No matter the date, they were grateful the country was not at war.
President Roosevelt’s 1939 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation was significant in another way as well, one that few would have noticed at the time, as so much emphasis was placed on the fact that the president had upended the expected date. Even today, the most striking thing about this proclamation would go unnoticed by modern readers. President Roosevelt was the first president, ever, to mention Pilgrims in his proclamation.
For 1939, illustrator J. C. Leyendecker had painted a simple concept for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post: a turkey sitting in a tree. The fowl looks almost as if it is deciding where to land—on the twenty-third or the thirtieth. Meanwhile, in the background, a small boy and his dog look on as Grandpa sharpens his ax. The magazine published its issue on a convenient Saturday falling between the two holidays—November 25.
Where the mid- to late nineteenth century had Thomas Nast and Harper’s Weekly, so the mid-twentieth century had Leyendecker, his younger admirer Norman Rockwell, and the Saturday Evening Post. It was arguably the most powerful magazine in the country, appearing like clockwork each week in nearly three million American homes—and circulation continued to grow. The magazine’s art and illustrations were often a reflection—as Thomas Nast’s illustrations were in his times—of the mood of the country, or at least the mood as perceived by the artist and the publication’s editors.
Over the years, Leyendecker’s annual holiday covers varied from nostalgic to sardonic. In 1907, a Pilgrim is depicted stalking an unsuspecting turkey. In 1920, however, an alarmed Pilgrim recoils as arrows whiz by his ear, piercing the roasted bird on the table in front of him. Title: Startled Pilgrim. In December 1923, a rare post–Thanksgiving Day cover image was dubbed Trading for a Turkey, and portrayed the Pilgrim in question as more of a shady salesman than the founder of any respectable feast.
In November 1928, a buff, strapping Pilgrim with a blunderbuss tossed over his shoulder stood defiantly staring down his rival . . . a college footballer. The 1928 cover highlighted two aspects of the holiday that had begun to take hold in American culture in the early twentieth century—football and Pilgrims. The artist depicting this Pilgrim-leatherhead face-off was again Leyendecker. However, the legend at the bottom of this cover read “Thanksgiving: 1628–1928”—not the 1621 date modern-day Americans might habitually peg as the “first” occurrence of thanksgiving.
The conflation of thanksgivings, days of fasting and humiliation, harvest festivals, and more had long predated Hale’s campaigns. The feasting associated with the holiday had taken root in New England, and was no doubt influenced by the region’s Puritan roots and that population’s early desire to distance themselves from Christmas celebrations, which were considered indulgent, pagan, and possibly heretical.
While Puritans wanted to reform the Anglican Church, Pilgrims wanted a clean break from the scene altogether. Pilgrims had left England for Holland before coming to North America, eventually returning briefly to England in order to sail across the Atlantic, landing in what would become New England in 1620. Their first year in their new home did not go well; the Pilgrims found it harder to survive than they had anticipated. In April 1621, Pilgrims formed a treaty with the nearby Wampanoag. Their leader, Ousamequin—often referred to by his title, Massasoit—had offered these newcomers his protection and more than a little instruction about how to survive in the climate and successfully tend the land. The Wampanoag had their own conflicts in the region to worry about, and prior interactions between them and European explorers—going back to the 1500s and increasing drastically in the early 1600s—often resulted in sickness and wanton violence. The land that the Pilgrims occupied had been the site of a village of Indigenous peoples that had been eradicated by disease. The devastated Wampanoag were wary but also in need of allies and weapons, hence the treaty that was struck in early 1621. At some point in the fall of 1621, after a successful harvest, the Pilgrims ate better than they had in some time.
That November, in a cover letter accompanying a report to their financial backers in England, Edward Winslow, assistant to the governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, wrote the following:
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time, amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others.
These lines above are literally all that is known of the 1621 gathering with the Wampanoag. When Governor Bradford himself later wrote a history of his time in Plymouth, titled Of Plimouth Plantation, he did not mention a gathering with the Wampanoag, but rather focused on the welcome abundance of food. It seems the Pilgrims themselves did not place much significance on that 1621 event.
Sometime later, in November 1621, the ironically named ship Fortune brought more colonists to the Pilgrim settlement, but no supplies. More Pilgrim arrivals meant less food. Tensions between the Pilgrims and the Native peoples increased. Bloodshed ensued. The Great Puritan Migration continued, as what eventually became New England grew and expanded. Ousamequin died in 1660, and almost from the moment of his death onward, relations between his sons, their people, and the European newcomers became increasingly fraught as the English began to far outnumber, and exploit, the Indigenous people. Fifteen years after Ousamequin’s death, King Philip’s War erupted. Ousamequin’s son Metacom—in English, “Philip”—led a confederation of Native peoples into battle against the newcomers. At least three thousand Native Americans were killed. Many others were sold into slavery. After returning home, Metacom was betrayed, killed, beheaded, and quartered. His head was displayed on a pike in Plymouth for twenty-five years.
The interesting thing about the thanksgiving story Americans grew up hearing is that in all of Sarah Josepha Hale’s letters to the presidents—including the one sent to Lincoln—not once did she mention the Pilgrims or 1621 or Ousamequin. And not once did Lincoln, in his proclamations, replete with sincere intentions and humble prose, with their calls for gratitude, make a single reference to the Pilgrims or the Puritans or the 1621 event or any events occurring in Plymouth. The proclamation that Seward penned and which Lincoln signed said nothing whatsoever about feasts with neighboring Native peoples or the Mayflower or the Wampanoag. Lincoln’s documents mentioned nothing of what the Pilgrims ate on this day; it recalled nothing of that harsh winter. If anything, his documents were, rather, a harkening back to thanksgivings—those with a little t—of old. Those that looked to bounties in the midst of scarcity, those that found grace in the midst of strife, those that acknowledged loss yet embraced what few and fleeting gains there appeared to be.
In the years immediately following Lincoln, when the press spoke of thanksgiving, it was often to vaguely mention early New England Puritan traditions and Pilgrim forefathers. Soon, though, interpretations and embellishments of the story of these early American settlers began to work their way into newspapers and magazines, and therefore into homes and culture. This romanticization coincided with growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the later nineteenth century and an aggrandizement of Anglo-Saxon heritage.
One of the first, widely read works on the story of thanksgiving was an 1869 article in the popular Our Young Folks: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls, written by J. H. A. Bone. Titled “The First New England Thanksgiving,” this work seems to be at least partially responsible for the embracing of the novelization of the history, and would sound familiar to any child growing up in America in the latter half of the twentieth century, when images from 1973’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and 1988’s “The Mayflower Voyagers” embedded themselves in the cultural consciousness. Though intended for young readers, Bone’s article was reprinted in newspapers across the country that year. Nearly twenty years later, in 1887, Demorest’s Monthly Magazine reprinted Bone’s entire story again—but this time credited the tale to H. Maria George. It is clear from a survey of nineteenth-century journalism and books that thanksgiving’s history has always been challenging for the media.
In 1875, the New York Times reflected on what it considered to be the hundred-year anniversary of Thanksgiving, citing the 1775 proclamation issued during the Revolutionary War. In 1890, in an article titled “A National Thanksgiving. The Custom Not Really Established Until 1862. It Is a New-England Holiday, But the Turkey Comes from the South,” it reviewed some previous presidentially proclaimed thanksgivings, the fleeting nature of the day itself, and then glossed over its murkier history. “There has been some controversy over the real origin of a Thanksgiving Day in America,” the November 23 article stated. “It seems, however, that the first one was in New-England, established not by Puritans, but by men of the Church of England. In 1607, at Monhegan, near the Kennebeck, a thanksgiving was celebrated.”
The article proceeded to proclaim a supposed truth about the meal of choice for the day as well: “And thus, while Thanksgiving Day may be a New-England invention, and, as a national observance may have had its beginning in New-York, the noble turkey, its most glorious feature, was first discovered in the South.” (In fact, we now know that the domestic turkeys of which we are so fond can trace their lineage back to tamed Aztec birds from southern Mexico.)
Also in 1889, a writer named Jane G. Austin took the tale a step further, publishing an entire novel on the topic, titled Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims. This highly romanticized—and fictionalized—account of the relations between the Native peoples and the Pilgrims, in which Austin described a fanciful outdoor dinner between the two groups, became the inspiration for a Ladies’ Home Journal article seven years later, which described the perfect Thanksgiving Day dinner. The article included such details from the book as: “roast turkey, dressed with beechnuts . . . rare venison pasties . . . savory meat stews . . . delicious oysters (the gift of the Indians, and the first ever tasted by the white men) . . . great bowls of clam chowder . . .” Salads, baskets overflowing with grapes and nuts, decorated tables, cakes, porridge . . . The story was headed with an illustration by W. L. Taylor, titled The First Thanksgiving Dinner, with Portraits of the Pilgrim Fathers.
In 1899, the Journal of Education—“Devoted to Education, Science, and Literature”—cited both Austin’s book and the Ladies’ Home Journal article in their “Thanksgiving References,” claiming that Standish of Standish was “worthy of careful study,” and that the Ladies’ Home Journal article was “a very good account of . . . the first Thanksgiving.”
Again, it seemed, a women’s magazine—not unlike the Lady’s Book—was influencing, albeit inaccurately, the course of American culture.
Hale may very well have longed for a national day of thanksgiving, but neither she nor Lincoln—nor any other presidential proclamation following in their footsteps—sought to commemorate a specific event that occurred in New England, or to modify the story of how or what was eaten. Rather, in their eyes, they were merely extending a custom, a tradition, a practice going back so very many years, of taking time to be thankful.
It’s true that the intentions of early adopters are often not borne out by subsequent generations of interpretations. If Hale’s request was for a unifying holiday, and Lincoln’s acquiescence was an attempt to solidify a moment of unification in a fragmented country, neither would have any idea how their actions would combine and evolve later. Never in her life would Hale have envisioned football being part of the national celebration. Lincoln, determined to keep the country together, probably would have thought it strange to imagine department store parades.
In the months following the upended holiday of 1939, various investigations attempted to determine just how much Roosevelt’s change in tradition had really helped Christmas sales nationwide, especially in light of how much it had divided the states. And in May 1941, Roosevelt himself admitted the experiment—with the upheaval among states and sports and more—had not been a successful one.
However, there was an enduring result of Roosevelt’s failed experiment: In that fall of 1941, the issue Hale had brought to everyone’s attention years earlier was finally addressed with decisive action. A House resolution was put forth to make the holiday the last Thursday in the month. But a Senate judiciary committee insisted on a change—from the “last” Thursday to the “fourth.” The change was quickly accepted in the wake of much more pressing news—the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
As with the president who initially answered Hale’s call for a unifying holiday, Roosevelt, too, took the holiday in a more fixed direction and also did so at a time of increasing peril. On December 26, 1941, little more than two weeks after Pearl Harbor and as the United States entered into World War II, Roosevelt signed the thanksgiving resolution with little fanfare. In doing so he established, once and for all, Thanksgiving Day as a federal holiday in the United States of America—seventy-eight years after President Lincoln’s initial proclamation of 1863, nearly a century after Sarah Josepha Hale began her campaign for a national holiday on the last Thursday of November.
The festivities Hale envisioned and shared were a reflection of her own upbringing in New England, including the foods and religious observances she had learned from her Puritan ancestors. The thanksgivings of the 1860s were a reflection of a nation in the throes of—and finally free of—the shackles of war. For Roosevelt, more than any other president, the holiday was steeped in the undeniable commercialism that had become increasingly associated with the day.
But World War II took its toll on many facets of American life, including the holiday. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was canceled between 1942 and 1944. Food rations were in place, presenting challenges even for those fortunate enough to celebrate at home. The Thanksgiving cover Norman Rockwell created for the November 1942 Saturday Evening Post depicted an exhausted army cook. Rockwell himself painted a turkey that Thanksgiving Day, but it would not grace the magazine’s cover until March 3, 1943. The completed image, of a family gathered around a Thanksgiving table, was titled Freedom from Want and was inspired by President Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. In what is often referred to as the “Four Freedoms Speech,” Roosevelt described what he saw as the essential freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Rockwell created images for all of them, which were used to sell an estimated $132 million in war bonds. To illustrate Freedom from Want, which accompanied an essay in the Post by Filipino American author and activist Carlos Bulosan, Rockwell chose a Thanksgiving meal and used family and friends as his models. A grandmother places a turkey on a table surrounded by generations of guests. It became one of his most popular illustrations ever.
A year later, however, Rockwell could not look away from the suffering abroad. In November 1943, his Refugee Thanksgiving cover featured a young Italian girl with long dark hair sitting amid fallen columns, chains, and rubble. Her hands are clasped in prayer, a simple tin pan sits on her knee, and the jacket of an American GI drapes her shoulders.
Even in celebration, the holiday often reflected the solemnity of the moment, in which individuals found even the smallest graces for which to give thanks. Home for Thanksgiving, the cover Rockwell created for the November 24, 1945, Saturday Evening Post, broadcast the nation’s gratitude at the war’s end. There were no grand tables or turkey shoots, no Pilgrims or footballers. Just a mother and a uniformed son sitting together in a simple kitchen peeling potatoes. As models for the cover, Rockwell used Alex Hagelberg and her son Dick, a bombardier who had flown sixty-five successful missions over Germany and had recently returned home safe to celebrate Thanksgiving with his mother.