While we often recount the origins of the American tradition of Thanksgiving, we don’t usually think about how it became enshrined in our calendars in November.

The first Thanksgiving celebrated by our Pilgrims, the Plymouth colonists, was originally just a harvest festival in the fall of 1621. The feast was not repeated in the years after, and it wasn’t until 1822 that this original feast was elevated to the historical significance it now enjoys.

So how did this one-off harvest dinner party become culturally significant enough to make it into a federal holiday? There are two people to credit for this – President Abraham Lincoln, who created the national holiday, and Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book (a premiere fashion magazine of its day), and, as Jason Mattera calls her, an original “GirlBoss.”

Born in 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire, Sarah Josepha Hale was a trailblazer in every sense of the word.

First woman to lead a major magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book? Check.

Self-taught? Check.

Helped start Vassar College? Check.

Author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, one of the most iconic nursery rhymes ever? Check.

Raised five kids by herself after her husband’s premature death? Check.

In fact, her literary career began out of necessity. Widowed at a young age, Hale wrote poems, novels, and essays to support her family. But here’s the twist: She didn’t just write to survive — she thrived.

She transformed Godey’s Lady’s Book into America’s premiere women’s magazine, with circulation skyrocketing to 150,000 by 1860. Her platform attracted contributions from heavyweights like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hale wasn’t just about ink and paper, though. She championed women’s education, advocated for keeping one’s house in order, and even spearheaded efforts to protect and preserve George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.

She also wrote the novel Northwood, a work of fiction to promote the idea of setting aside a day for national gratitude.

This brings us to her most enduring legacy: Hale’s unyielding push to inaugurate Thanksgiving as a federal holiday.

Hale was 72 years old and still editing Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. Her advocacy for a national day of Thanksgiving had led her to believe that it should be a federal holiday, and all she needed was a president to listen to her.

Determined to make her dream a reality, Hale had already spent decades writing letters to numerous U.S. presidents, pleading for them to embrace her cause. Yet, as she admitted, she faced “obstacles not possible to be overcome without legislative aid.” Still, she pressed on, firmly believing that a presidential proclamation was the “best, surest, and most fitting method of National appointment.”

The president who finally listened? Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, influenced by Hale’s letters, he issued this proclamation, which reads in part:

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, 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 the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

1863 was a crucial year for America. The Battle of Gettysburg, now recognized as the pivotal battle of the entire Civil War, had been fought that July. The Confederate Army’s defeat there sent them into retreat, and they would never get that far north again. However, the Union Army, under General George Meade, failed to pursue General Robert E. Lee and his troops once they retreated, which meant the war would continue. Vicksburg had been surrendered to the Union right after Gettysburg. Lincoln knew that the Union’s victory had been purchased at great cost (he would deliver the Gettysburg Address after this proclamation was issued), and he knew how close the Union had been to being permanently broken. In 1863, it seemed the tide had turned, and Lincoln’s last paragraph of the Thanksgiving proclamation reflects the struggle and strife that the country was going through, and the need to give thanks to God, even in the midst of the war.

By the fall of 1864, the momentum was most definitely with the Union. Lincoln had appointed Ulysses S. Grant as commander of the Union Army (which was confirmed on February 29th of that year), General Sherman had captured Atlanta in September, and his “March to the Sea” was already underway. Lincoln was poised to win re-election on the backs of these victories (which he did on November 8th). It is little wonder that he published a repeat Thanksgiving proclamation on October 20, 1864.

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

President Lincoln would never see another Thanksgiving. By the time the next fall rolled around, the war was over and Lincoln was in his grave. Andrew Johnson apparently had to be reminded to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1865 (it ended up being the first Thursday of December that year), but ever since then, the holiday has been consistently celebrated in November. It became a federal holiday in 1941, when Congress declared it would be celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday of November.

Sarah Josepha Hale lived to see Thankgiving become enshrined as an American tradition. She retired as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1877 at age 89, and passed away in 1879. While the holiday has become far more commercialized than Hale intended, and often focuses far more on the meal than the sentiment behind the holiday, Thanksgiving is her legacy to us. Here we are, 161 years later from her letter and influence pushing President Lincoln to proclaim a day of thanks. While it is appropriate to pay attention to the Pilgrim origins of the holiday (and ignore those who complain about that same story), Thanksgiving was born out of war, and reflected a gratitude to God that the country was still standing, despite the horror and tragedy of that war. And the credit deserves to go to Sarah Josepha Hale.

Featured image via HeartlandMom on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license