Bethel 11/22/20 Service

Thanksgiving has actually been celebrated, unofficially, since colonial times. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Thanksgiving was historically always celebrated on a Thursday because it distanced the festival from the Sabbath, and Thursday was also the day that ministers would give religious lectures.

But WHY the FOURTH Thursday in November?
The answer to that is a little bit longer....

The formal observance of Thanksgiving Day only began in 1863, when Lincoln proclaimed the holiday in response to the horrors of the Civil War. By then, the tradition of giving thanks as a nation had been in place since 1777, when Congress declared a national day of thanksgiving after America’s victory at the Battle of Saratoga. Afterward, presidents would proclaim periodic days of fasting, prayer and expressing gratitude.

When President George Washington established the first Thanksgiving in the United States of America in 1789 he assigned "Thursday the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be."

One might think that could have established a "tradition" of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday (or last Thursday) in November. However, On January 1, 1795, Washington also proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day to be observed on Thursday, February 19.

The practice of calling for national days of fasting and prayer was interrupted from 1801, when Thomas Jefferson "refused to endorse the tradition", until 1815 when James Madison recommended restoring the practice...and Madison's "Day of Public Thanksgiving for Peace" was on the "second Thursday in April".

Our current official "Thanksgiving Day" hasn't always been celebrated on the "fourth Thursday of November" either. In 1863, when Abraham Lincoln was president, he proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day. But in 1865, turkey day was celebrated on the first Thursday in November due to a proclamation by then-president Andrew Johnson. Thanksgiving Day changed once again in 1869 when President Ulysses S. Grant chose the third Thursday for Thanksgiving. After that it returned to the last Thursday in November.

It wasn’t until 1939 (when the last Thursday was November 30) that President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the steps to change Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday of November. In response to pressure from the National Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season, President Roosevelt moved the holiday to the next-to-last-Thursday of the month. The new proclamation only applied to Washington, D.C., and federal employees, leaving governors to decide when their states would celebrate the holiday. That year, 23 states celebrated on Nov. 23, 23 states celebrated on Nov. 30, and Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays as Thanksgiving Day.

from wikipedia: In 1939 Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. Although many popular histories state otherwise, he made clear that his plan was to establish the holiday on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one...Republicans decried the change, calling it an affront to the memory of Lincoln. People began referring to November 30 as the "Republican Thanksgiving" and November 23 as the "Democratic Thanksgiving" or "Franksgiving". Regardless of the politics, many localities had made a tradition of celebrating on the last Thursday, and many football teams had a tradition of playing their final games of the season on Thanksgiving; with their schedules set well in advance, they could not change...In 1940 and 1941, years in which November had four Thursdays, Roosevelt declared the third one as Thanksgiving. As in 1939, some states went along with the change while others retained the traditional last-Thursday date.

In 1941, after two years of confusion, Christmas shopping was in disarray, football teams were frustrated, and families had no idea when to celebrate the holiday. So President Roosevelt made a choice. He officially signed legislation establishing Thanksgiving Day as the fourth Thursday in November. Congress later introduced legislation to guarantee no future presidents could change the date of the holiday.