Washington Proclaims Thanksgiving: A New American Tradition

George Washington issued a proclamation asking Americans to observe a day of public thanksgiving, making November 26, 1789, the first nationally recognized Thanksgiving in United States history. The request was not a command but an invitation, and Washington framed it not as a celebration of abundance but as gratitude for the new Constitution that had taken effect earlier that year. The idea of thanksgiving days was already familiar in the colonies. Puritans in New England had observed occasional days of fasting and thanksgiving since the 1620s, and the Continental Congress proclaimed multiple thanksgiving days during the Revolutionary War. Washington's 1789 proclamation was different because it carried the authority of a newly formed federal government. Congress had passed a joint resolution requesting that the president recommend a day of thanks, and Washington responded on October 3 designating November 26. The proclamation asked Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God" and to pray for the new government's success. Washington attended services at St. Paul's Chapel in New York, then the nation's capital. Not everyone approved. Some members of Congress argued that proclaiming religious observances overstepped federal authority, and Thomas Jefferson later refused to issue thanksgiving proclamations as president, calling them inappropriate. Thanksgiving did not become an annual national holiday until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a permanent observance during the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, had campaigned for the holiday for 36 years. Franklin Roosevelt moved it to the second-to-last Thursday in 1939 to extend the Christmas shopping season, prompting Congress to fix it as the fourth Thursday in 1941.