Those of you with truly elephantic memories will recall my first Thanksgiving Day column, back in 2007, discussed how Sarah Josepha Hale, authoress and the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, then the largest selling publication in America, petitioned President Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. It took a lot of letter-writing and personal visits to Federal officials, but finally, she got President Lincoln to agree. In 1863, Honest Abe issued a proclamation, establishing the last Thursday in November as an annual national holiday of “Thanksgiving and Praise”.
What I didn’t discuss in that article was why it took so long for Thanksgiving to be formally recognised. After all, the tradition of Thanksgiving had existed on the continent for two-hundred-forty-four years, since 04 December 1619, when a group of thirty-eight English settlers landing at Berkeley Hundred, in the colony of Virginia, held a service of thanksgiving and proclaimed that their date of arrival would be observed in perpetuity as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” Three years later came the event we most associate with the first Thanksgiving, when the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, following their first successful harvest, held an autumn celebration of feasting and giving thanks to God.
The observance goes back even further if we include our neighbours to the north, where the first celebration of Thanksgiving in North America occurred in 1579 after the safe landing of Sir Martin Frobisher’s fleet in Newfoundland, Canada, following its unsuccessful attempt to locate the Northwest Passage. (I promise, I will get around to doing a piece on Canadian Thanksgiving.)
So, why did it take so long for it to become a national holiday?
It all comes down to the subject of my article this year---someone who became known as “The Man Who Hated Thanksgiving”.
For most of those two-hundred-odd years, Thanksgiving was strictly a local holiday. Its observance, or not, depended on the traditions of individual communities. It’s also important to remember that “holiday” did not have quite the same meaning then as it does, now. Modern-day Americans regard a holiday as a day off work, to relax and indulge. Especially since 1971, when the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968 put most Federal holidays on the Monday nearest the actual dates, giving us leisurely three-day week-ends.
But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a holiday was busy and full of work. Most of the day was spent in church services. Then came the routine of the womenfolk preparing and cooking the feast (that part hasn’t changed much in four hundred years), which had required that the men go out and hunt for game and harvest crops. Fires had to built and dining facilities erected. This was part and parcel because holidays were viewed as religious observances and not as opportunities to kick back and sleep in late.
Thus, it’s not surprising that some communities, those not particularly founded on a particular faith, opted to skip the whole Thanksgiving business.
In the interests of completeness, before Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation, the government did involve itself in the subject of thanksgiving (lower-case “t”). In 1777, the Continental Congress declared a day of “thanksgiving” in recognition of the American colonials’ defeat of the British at the Battle of Saratoga. George Washington must’ve liked the idea. As the first President of the United States, he did the same thing twice. In 1789, Washington dedicated 26 November “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.” Six years later, he proclaimed 19 February 1795 as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” Note here that the Father of Our Country did not establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday; he just selected two days out of his eight years as President to recognise giving thanks to a higher power.
His successor, John Adams, also did the same thing twice---or rather, something similar. He declared 09 May 1798 and 25 April 1799 as days of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” But he never mentioned anything about giving thanks. It really didn’t matter, anyway. Adams was so unpopular that the two days he marked for religious observance were largely dismissed.
And that brings us to Thomas Jefferson, the third President---and the man who put a dagger into the idea of a national Thanksgiving.
When Jefferson became President, the public expectation was that he would make at least one proclamation addressing the notion of giving thanks of a Higher Power. But he never did. To him, it was a deeper matter.
To understand Jefferson’s thinking on the subject, it’s first necessary to point out that, by the prevailing Christian standards of the day, Jefferson was an odd duck.
Jefferson was a deist, in that very much believed in a Supreme Being. What he did not do was ascribe to any particular religious faith. He found problems with most of them. He discounted most of the teachings of the King James Bible, rejecting Biblical miracles, the resurrection, the atonement, and the Holy Trinity. Jefferson regarded the central Christian tenet that God had condemned all humanity for the sins of others as a gross injustice.
Yet this was the same man who referenced “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He recognised value in a man having religious belief system, but insisted that it was a matter of individual, personal choice, something with which the government shouldn’t interfere or dictate. That’s what drove him to include “freedom of religion” in the First Amendment to the Constitution. He was so proud of his authorship of religious freedom that it is one of his three accomplishments he directed to be engraved on his tombstone.
You can probably see where this is going.
Because of Jefferson’s unconventional views on religion, his political opponents in the Federalist Party criticised him as an “unbeliever”. Actually, worse than that. He was called a “howling atheist” and a “hardened infidel” and an “enemy of religion”. The Federalists used Jefferson’s refusal to publicly announce a day of thanksgiving as evidence of this. And it didn’t help matters any when, in 1802, he went on record with his beliefs---and in a rare stumble for such an eloquent author, he failed to make his stance clear.
In October, 1801, the Danbury Baptists Association, in Connecticut, wrote a letter to President Jefferson. Baptists had long been persecuted in the colonies for their (relatively minor, by conventional thinking) deviations from standard Christian practises, and the Connecticut constitution did not provide for religious liberty. The Association’s letter to Jefferson requested the Federal government’s assurance that the Baptists would be able to worship their faith without interference.
Jefferson saw this as an opportunity to fully explain his views on state-sponsored religion. In fact, he informed his friend, Attorney General Levi Lincoln, “[the Danbury Baptists Association’s letter] furnishes the occasion too, which I have long wished to find, of saying why I do not proclaim fastings and thanksgivings, as my predecessors did.”
The letter which Jefferson wrote in reply expressed his, and the Federal government’s, support for the Association’s request. Notably, one section of that letter has become part of the fabric of our governmental system (boldface mine).
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship . . . I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State . . .
Yet, despite Jefferson’s intentions, a reading of the entire letter shows no mention of his refusal to observe the tradition of thanksgiving!
He intended to. In the first draught of his reply, Jefferson tackled his enemies’ accusations head-on, explaining that he considered declaring fasts or days of thanksgiving to be expressions of religion. As such, they were the province of individuals and families and religious communities---and governments had no place in imposing or encouraging them.
It was that simple. To Jefferson, a Presidential proclamation of a day of thanks violated the separation of church and state.
However, when Jefferson showed this early version of his reply to Levi Lincoln, the attorney general had a concern: Jefferson’s stated refusal to officially sanction a day of thanksgiving might be construed as an indictment of Connecticut and the other New England states, where an annual thanksgiving feast had become a state-sponsored tradition. After some deliberation, Jefferson deleted all references to thanksgiving in the final copy of the letter that was sent to the Danbury Baptists Association.
It was a political misstep for Jefferson. As he’d expected, his letter was repeated in the newspapers of the day, but as he’d omitted any mention of thanksgiving, the public remained unaware of his rationale. And with no information to the contrary, many people bought into the Federalist slurs on his religious character. Thus, it gave rise to his reputation as “the Man Who Hated Thanksgiving”.
In the larger perspective, Jefferson survived the negative image. He was reëlected to the Presidency in 1804. As far as his legacy goes, he is much more known for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his contributions to our Constitution, and enacting the Louisiana Purchase. These are the things every schoolboy knows about him, what most of us know about him.
It was Thanksgiving that took the hit. The next President, James Madison, waited until well into his second term before he issued a proclamation calling for a day of thanksgiving on 04 March 1815. But Jefferson’s largely successful Presidency had undercut the perception that the man in the White House had to demonstrate religious convictions. So, the public responded to Madison’s declaration with little more than a shrug.
And that did it. With no political consequences to worry about, the next eleven Presidents never issued an official mention on the idea of Thanksgiving. The idea of Federal recognition for such a holiday died on the vine.
Until Sarah Josepha Hale got stubborn about it.
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From Cheryl and myself, to all of you, our fondest wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving Day, and many more of them!
Replies
Right back at you, Commander! I'm so happy that you are maintaining your lovely Thanksgiving column tradition.