The air is getting chillier, and the days are getting shorter…November is the month we start preparing for winter and staying indoors. It’s the month we take time to step back and reflect on the journey of our lives, to remember how far we’ve come. On Thanksgiving Day, we celebrate and be thankful for what we with our family and friends. Every final Thursday of the month was declared a national holiday by the U.S. government. There’s an interesting fact, and an Illinois connection, on how Thanksgiving became a federal holiday.
In July 1863, there was about 50,000 American casualties from the Battle of Gettysburg. The United States achieved great victory during the three days of battle, despite the losses.
On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation to the nation:
“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving… And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him …, 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 Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
The proclamation president Lincoln gave to the nation was viewed as the inception of the national holiday for Thanksgiving Day. Lincoln issued the proclamation, but he did not author it. There are debates among scholars of when Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday. In October 1863, Secretary of State William Seward penned the proclamation.
In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt broke from tradition and declared November 23, the next to last Thursday as Thanksgiving Day. This deviation was met with some controversy and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt’s declaration. On December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt corrected his mistake and signed a bill into law officially making the last Thursday in November as the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day.
