A Day of Thanks, A Tale of Tensions

The Thanksgiving holiday nicely captures some of the key cultural features that figure into our unique American character. What binds us together as a people? What is the cultural stuff that knits us into a nation? Thanksgiving suggests an answer. We Americans are a religiously devout people, and yet we are rather insecure about our devotion. The story of Thanksgiving highlights our nation’s unsteady relationship to religion. We are also a people who love to have fun. We feast, we play games, and we are pretty good at those things. Thanks to our mighty aptitude for commerce, we have marshalled these cultural impulses—our unsteady attachment to religion, and steady attachment to fun—and shaped our Thanksgiving holiday.

Our Thanksgiving observances trace back to our earliest days on this continent. From time to time, the colonial and state governments of early America set aside special days for giving thanks. By doing so they acknowledged God’s hand of blessing upon themselves. But when a national government formed under the newly-ratified Constitution, opinions divided over whether this new government should proclaim such a day across the nation. On September 24, 1789, the first U.S. congress voted to limit its own reach in matters of religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Of course, this resolution was later ratified and became part of the first amendment to the constitution. The following day, Rep. Elias Boudinot introduced the next item of business, a resolution calling for a nationwide day of thanksgiving. He moved that Congress form a joint committee "to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness."

“I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it's exercises, it's discipline, or it's doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises.-Thomas Jefferson”

A debate ensued over the propriety of the resolution. One congressman protested that such an action would “make a mockery of thanksgivings.” He mentioned European practice as a cautionary tale: “Two parties at war frequently sung Te Deum for the same event, though to one it was a victory, and to the other a defeat.” Another claimed that this should not be a federal matter: “If a day of thanksgiving must take place,” he said, “let it be done by the authority of the several States.” (The proceedings are recorded here.)

National piety prevailed in the end. Congress adopted the proposal, and President Washington followed suit. He proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789, to be a “public day of thanksgiving and prayer.” Conspicuously, Washington referenced a rather imprecise deity; he studiously avoided language that might exclude Trinitarians, Unitarians, or even deists. His proclamation honored “that great and glorious being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” (You can see the document here; click “transcription” for a more readable version.) This set a precedent for nationwide devotional observances. Washington issued a similar proclamation after he suppressed the Whiskey rebellion in 1795 (see document here). John Adams declared national days of fasting and humiliation on a couple of occasions during his administration, but he set aside no days for thanksgiving.

When Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency, he bucked the trend that his Federalist predecessors had initiated. His convictions echoed the minority view expressed in the first congress. Previously, as governor of Virginia, Jefferson had authored the famous “statute of religious freedom” that forbade state support for religion. The statute remains as Virginia law today. Now as President, Jefferson believed that the constitution prohibited him, as an agent of the federal government, from declaring any thanksgiving observances. He set forth his reasoning in in a famous 1801 letter to a group of Baptists from New England, where he described “a wall of separation between church and state.” (See Jefferson’s letter here along with helpful context explained here.)

Jefferson held fast to this conviction through the end of his second term. When Presbyterian divine Samuel Miller urged him to proclaim a day of prayer and thanksgiving. Jefferson wrote in reply, “I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.” He went on to explain, “I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it's exercises, it's discipline, or it's doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises.” (You can read Jefferson’s letter to Miller in its entirety here.)

President James Madison revived the national observances that Jefferson, his immediate predecessor, had opposed. During Madison’s presidency, the United States endured the bitter War of 1812. In the face of this national trial, Madison used his presidential office to declare a day of national confession (see his 1812 proclamation here) and another day of “public humiliation and prayer” (see his 1813 proclamation here). After Congress secured peace by ratifying the Treaty of Ghent, they called upon Madison to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving. Madison obliged. (The text of Madison’s 1815 Thanksgiving proclamation can be found here.) Later, when Madison reflected back upon his many years of public service, he questioned the propriety of such proclamations. He came to embrace a view that more closely resembled Jefferson’s. (See Madison’s extensive discussion in his “Detached Memoranda” of 1820.)

Our nation’s early observances of Thanksgiving highlight competing ideas about the relationship of religion to our national government. In the early republic we witness the sincere piety of Christians like Samul Miller who believed the American people should express their gratitude to the God of the Bible. We also see George Washington straining to accommodate different notions of deity by proclaiming thanks to a one-size-fits-all “beneficent author of all the good.” Jefferson, however, refused to officially promote any nationwide religious observance, including thanksgiving proclamations. Madison’s own proclamations went against the convictions he later expressed in his retirement from public life.

The presidential proclamations up to this point addressed particular occasions. How did Thanksgiving become a regular, annual observance? This development features a magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale. Through her forty-year tenure as editoress of Godey’s Ladies Book, Hale shaped a distinctively American vision of feminine propriety. (Hale referred to herself as an “editoress.”) Hale helped turn American tastes away from old-world fashion by celebrating America’s own national virtues. Hale assigned to women a leading role in the nation’s civilizing project. Her magazine portrayed wives and mothers as the governesses of home and hearth, guardians of the nation’s moral purity. Hale leveraged her platform as an editor to campaign for an annual thanksgiving observance. Over the years she wrote letters to five presidents in support of a national holiday.

Hale was part of the generation that forged America’s national identity. Her predecessors, the founders of a generation earlier, had torn themselves away from European influences across the Atlantic. Hale and her contemporaries pivoted their attention away from the Atlantic seaboard and constructed a national narrative oriented toward the west. Americans like Hale began scripting the nation’s own autobiography. They commissioned monuments to honor the nation’s founding heroes, they adopted a national anthem, and they sent the Liberty Bell on tour. It was Hale who spearheaded the erection of a large monument in Boston at the site of Bunker Hill. This was America’s heyday of national mythmaking. When the hardy patriots of Hale’s generation ran across obscure mentions of a harvest meal in Plymouth back in 1621, they deemed it to be one of our nation’s many “firsts”—the First Thanksgiving!

We yielded religious authority to circuit riders and celebrity pastors, and we adapted our liturgies to accommodate camp meetings and altar calls

A number of states adopted statewide thanksgiving observances in the antebellum period. When the Civil War broke out, Confederate President Jefferson Davis issued thanksgiving proclamations to commemorate southern successes. Abraham Lincoln issued similar proclamations in the wake of Union victories. After Lincoln issued one of these proclamations following the Battle of Gettysburg, Sarah Josepha Hale wrote him to press for something more. She advocated for an annual, nationwide observance. Hale wrote, “\[W]ould it not be fitting and patriotic for \[the President] to appeal to the Governors of all the States, inviting and commending these to unite in issuing proclamations for the last Thursday in November as the Day of Thanksgiving for the people of each State? Thus the great Union Festival of America would be established.” (Hale’s complete letter is here.) Lincoln obliged. You can see Lincoln’s thanksgiving proclamation here. Thus began our nation’s annual Thanksgiving holiday.

Our national Thanksgiving observance owes a great debt to a magazine editor. This fact points to America’s uncanny affinity for hoopla. What nation can outdo us in hoopla? It should come as no surprise, then, that Thanksgiving formed into a national holiday in the same era when we Americans “democratized” our religious practice. We yielded religious authority to circuit riders and celebrity pastors, and we adapted our liturgies to accommodate camp meetings and altar calls. This American religious hothouse produced the Mormons, Spiritualists, Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a host of others groups. My own Northern and Southern Presbyterians were in that mix too. Our Thanksgiving holiday was a holiday for all of us.

Six years after Lincoln declared Thanksgiving an annual holiday, Rutgers faced off against Princeton in the first intercollegiate football game. It was Thanksgiving Day, 1869: a harbinger of what lie ahead. Eastern colleges soon formed a league and designated Thanksgiving as the day when they would play their championship game. When Princeton faced Yale in the Polo Grounds at New York, carriages throughout the city were trimmed with school colors. Local pastors adjusted their conventional Thanksgiving service times to avoid any conflict with kickoffs. A writer for Harper’s Weekly wrote in 1891, “A great and powerful and fascinating rival has come to take the place of the Thanksgiving Day Dinner, the Thanksgiving Day Game. And now everyone goes out to see Princeton and Yale decide the football championship…instead of boring each other around the dinner table."

By the middle of the 1890s, some estimated that 120,000 athletes took part in 5,000 football games on Thanksgiving Day. They represented colleges, club teams, and high schools across the nation. A writer for the New York Herald remarked, “In these times Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given. It is a holiday granted by the State and the nation to see a game of football." That tradition continues.

If Sarah Josepha Hale inspired our first annual Thanksgiving celebration, George Richards carried it to its present form. Richards was a successful car dealer in Detroit back in the 1920s. His dealership was one of Detroit’s first businesses to advertise on the radio, a medium that was not yet a decade old. Before long, the advertiser became an owner when Richards took over Detroit radio station WJR. Richards then expanded his radio operations by buying out additional stations in Ohio and affiliating with the “NBC Blue” network. (NBC Blue is the predecessor to today’s ABC network.)

As a radio man, Richards knew that programming was lean on Thanksgiving Day. He also recognized that many families gathered in their homes on that day, near their radio consoles. In a display of American pluck, Richards worked his business connections in Ohio to purchase a professional football franchise, the Portsmouth Spartans. He relocated the club to Detroit and renamed them the Lions. Then he used his network connections to promote the game, fill the stadium to capacity, and broadcast it to a nationwide audience. Though the Lions lost to the Bears that Thanksgiving Day in 1934, Richards had launched a moneymaking holiday ritual. By this time football was already established as a Thanksgiving Day tradition. Now, thanks to George Richards, Americans need not partake in that tradition by sitting on chilly bleachers out in the elements. Now Americans could enjoy their Thanksgiving tradition from the comfort of their living rooms. The Detroit Lions have played before a nationwide media audience every Thanksgiving Day since 1934. In 1966, Dallas Cowboys owner Tex Schramm realized that more broadcast hours were available to fill our nation's holiday. That year he introduced the longstanding tradition of airing a Cowboys game later in the day, following the Lions game, thereby turning the Cowboys into "America's team." Richards and Schramm perfected what is now a quintessentially American devotional practice on Thanksgiving Day. We Americans give thanks to a vaguely elastic notion of deity as we enjoy a uniquely American game through our ritual participation in this great nation's ever-expanding commercial media.

I thank God that we can study our American heritage and learn from it—from the good, the bad, the silly, and everything that lands in between.

The 1930s marked the final chapter of America’s Thanksgiving observance. Since Lincoln’s day, Thanksgiving had landed on the final Thursday in November. In 1939, that Thursday was calendared for November 30th, the last day of the month. At the time, American merchants were struggling under the weight of the Great Depression. They worried that the later Thanksgiving that year would shorten the Christmas shopping season. (Since 1924, Macy’s Department store had staged a parade every Thanksgiving Day to commemorate the opening of the Christmas shopping season.) So these merchants prevailed upon President Franklin Roosevelt to move the Thanksgiving holiday a week earlier. Roosevelt agreed. In one of his many displays of chaotic New Deal lawmaking, he issued a proclamation that moved the holiday a week earlier. The move wreaked havoc on the football season. Several states, governed by Republicans, resisted Roosevelt’s move; they held their statewide Thanksgivings on the 30th. (The New York Times reported these events.)

The confusion over which day to hold Thanksgiving lasted for a few years. When the United States entered World War II, a spirit of national unity prevailed. We all agreed to commemorate the holiday on the fourth Thursday of November. So it continues to this day.

This Thanksgiving I am truly grateful to call myself an American. As I recall the story of our Thanksgiving observances, I am thankful for the quirks of American devotion, of American heritage, of American ways of having fun, and of plucky American commerce. For these quirks are our quirks—quirks that remind us where we fall short and where we need reformation. I thank God that we can study our American heritage and learn from it—from the good, the bad, the silly, and everything that lands in between. The God I thank is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is the Sovereign over our nation. Surely our nation, along with all other nations, are to Him like a drop in the bucket, and to Him they are counted as the small dust of the balance (Isaiah 40:15). Many Americans acknowledge this God, though not all of them do. May God grant that more of us would come before Him with thanksgiving, turning their devotion to the glory of His son Jesus Christ.