The first Thanksgiving was proclaimed by the governing council of Charlestown,
Massachusetts on June 20, 1676 to express thanks to the Almighty for their good
fortune, secure establishment of the colonists in America and to celebrate their
recent victory over 'heathen natives'. Unanimously, June 29 was declared as a
day of thanksgiving and of course Indians were not included in it. In October
1777, all the 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration for the first
time to commemorate the victory over the British at Saratoga. The event was not
repeated again. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed a National Day of
Thanksgiving but all the people did not find it a good move seeing the discord
among the colonies and the hardships of a few Pilgrims.
President Thomas Jefferson found celebrating Thanksgiving ridiculous, so it was
in 1863, when President Lincoln appointed the last Thursday in November as a
national day of Thanksgiving. Ever since then, all the presidents have made
Thanksgiving Proclamations. However, the dates of Thanksgiving were changed a
couple of times. Franklin Roosevelt shifted it to one week to the next-to-last
Thursday, so that people can have a longer Christmas shopping season but the
opposition of the public forced the government to move back Thanksgiving to its
original day two years later. It was only as recently as 1941, when Congress
finally sanctioned Thanksgiving as a legal holiday and fixed the fourth Thursday
in November to be celebrated as Thanksgiving Day.
The Continental Congress made the first ever National Thanksgiving Proclamation
in the year 1777 and continued the tradition for the next seven years or up to
1784. For the next three years or from 1785 to 1788, there were no national
Thanksgiving Proclamations until George Washington issued the first Presidential
Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789. Again, there was a long break in Thanksgiving
Proclamations from 1816 to 1861 until Abraham Lincoln issued two Thanksgiving
Proclamations in the spring of 1862 and the spring of 1863 to thank the God for
victories in battles. In the autumn of 1863, Lincoln issued yet another
Thanksgiving Proclamation that recounted general blessings of the year and it
was this proclamation that actually picked up the broken thread of annual
Thanksgiving proclamations and is regarded as the true beginning of the national
Thanksgiving holiday.
1676 Thanksgiving Proclamation
"The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive
dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land,
written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in
this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his
judgements he hath remembered mercy
