When was Thanksgiving added to the calendar as a holiday?

Answer 1

In the United States Thanksgiving was first celebrated in New England as Puritan religious observation declared in various years in response to "God's favorable Providence". It evolved over the years into a quasi-secular, annual New England autumnal celebration. It did not become a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November an annual day of thanksgiving in 1863, noting that this should be marked as "a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens". (The date was changed to the 4th Thursday in November by Franklin Roosevelt in 1941.)

The first Canadian Thanksgiving was celebrated by the explorer, Martin Frobisher, who in 1578 held a feast in Newfoundland to give thanks for surviving an attempt to search for a Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Various Thanksgiving celebrations were declared to celebrate special events until 1879, when it became an annual holiday. The date changed several times until Parliament declared the second Monday in October the Thanksgiving holiday in 1957.

Answer 2

Sara Josepha Hale, most famous for writing the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', decided that after she read a pilgrims diary that she wanted to recreate that first meal between the pilgrims and the natives. She made Thanksgiving an annual holiday in the 1880's and published recipes for Turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and potato.

Answer 3

Abraham Lincoln made this a national holiday in 1863

But it was not made a federal holiday until 1941:

On October 6, 1941 both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution fixing the traditional last-Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942. However, in December of that year the Senate passed an amendment to the resolution that split the difference by requiring that Thanksgiving be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes (less frequently) the next to last.

Answer 4

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