We have just celebrated Thanksgiving and I hope your heart was as filled with gratitude for family and friends as mine.

I grew up thinking that Thanksgiving was instituted as a national holiday because the Indians and Pilgrims celebrated together at Plymouth Rock. Is that what you were taught too? Would you be as surprised as I was to know that Thanksgiving actually became woven into the fabric of our nation because of a woman?!? It’s true. Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale.

Several times in the early years of our colonies, a day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed, but it never became a national tradition. Once was after the War of Independence was won. Another was in 1789 after President George Washington decreed November 26 to be the official day. However, none of those events became the recurring celebration that we now recognize.

Sarah Josepha Hale was a mother of five children, a professional writer and editor of a woman’s magazine. She was the first woman editor in our country at that time and she used that platform and her influence to promote a national day of thanks. She wrote hundreds of letters to presidents and governors over a span of almost 40 years in an effort to gain their support for her cause. As editor of the woman’s magazine, she published Thanksgiving recipes annually, along with other articles and stories with the Thanksgiving theme in order to promote her agenda. She was persistent in her campaign for an annual day of thanks.

Finally, she gained traction and buy-in when, during the Civil War she wrote a letter to William Seward, then Secretary of State, suggesting that a national day of Thanksgiving would be a “truly American” way to unify our country and “offer to God our tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year.” The letter was passed along to President Abraham Lincoln, who in agreement then set the last Thursday of November, 1863 as national Thanksgiving Day. And, the rest, as they say, is history.

Added now to my list of things to be grateful for this season of Thanksgiving is a woman of courage, persistence, and dedication who was not willing to give up on something she so passionately believed in and who used all of her talent and skills to see it accomplished.

She is a wonderful example to each woman today to “Go, and do likewise”! (Luke 10:37)

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