Interesting stuff I learned this morning about thanksgiving:
The ‘original thanksgiving’ between European pilgrims and their Native allies was not ever called thanksgiving or commemorated until much later.
It was a three-day feast of celebration and gratitude that later became associated with the national holiday thanksgiving. This version is sensitive because it often glorifies the moment of harmony before the century of violence that followed. But that’s not how thanksgiving originated and up until this morning, I did not know that.

Thanksgiving, as we know it, was declared by Abraham Lincoln after a 40-year campaign by a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale.
She is very interesting and I want to know even more about her but… it also seems that George Washington declared a day of thanksgiving before Lincoln but his thanksgiving was in February. Washington wanted to celebrate the new nation and dedicate thanks to God for our blessings. A bit of the spirit that has carried on but it wasn’t a nationally recognized holiday.
It wasn’t until the Civil War that the 4th Thursday of November was dedicated as a day to set aside and give thanks by Abraham Lincoln.
It seems that an influential woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, a ‘Martha Stewart’ of her day – editor, writer, mother, and social activist (she wrote Mary had a Little Lamb) – Sarah had been campaigning for a national day of Thanksgiving. It should be noted that she was also a Northerner and abolitionist.
As a writer and activist Sarah successfully got 30 states to celebrate the holiday by 1854. She wrote president Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward to urge them to proclaim the national holiday as a permanent holiday as a way to heal the nation from the wounds of the Civil War in 1863.
It was of mixed success. As a Northern abolitionist that was very vocal and very ‘Yankee’ Hale and the unionist president Lincoln were not the people many southerners wanted to be told to celebrate and give thanks.
For the victorious North, there was much to be thankful for but like Erishkigal and Inanna – for the South – there were hurt feelings and some bitterness towards their northern neighbors. In fact, Texas governor O.M. Roberts refused to recognize the ‘damned Yankee institution’ of thanksgiving from 1879-1882. He also was against the holiday as it mixed religion with government.
Pumpkins and pumpkin pies also became symbols of Yankee thanksgiving which may be why sweet potato and buttermilk are also so popular with the southern states. Me, I’m a Californian, I’d rather have guacamole 🥑