Sarah Josepha Hale’s interest in Thanksgiving was more than literary. Per History, she had grown up with such a November celebration, which was a popular harvest festival in parts of America even without official recognition or an explicit link to the so-called “first Thanksgiving” at Plymouth. Nor was Hale the only writer who helped popularize Thanksgiving, and turkey as the holiday meal of choice. Writings by Plymouth colonists that referred to their Thanksgiving feast and to the ample flocks of turkeys in the New World were republished in the mid-19th century. Alexander Hamilton is said to have vouched for turkey as an ideal Thanksgiving dinner (per USA Today). And Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” featured a plump Christmas turkey as a key plot element. Though a different holiday (and nationality), the novel did its part, according to some, to promote turkey dinners among its other accomplishments.
Read Related Also: ‘I’m so stupid’: Mom accused of shooting two young sons in the head claimed she fired four times in 30 seconds by accident, detective says
Hale went further than her peers, however, by campaigning to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. The idea had been around since George Washington’s time as president, and Hale saw official recognition of such a holiday as a potential remedy to growing sectarian tensions in the 1800s. She wrote publicly in editorials on the subject, and privately to President Abraham Lincoln. He followed through with an official proclamation in 1863, fixing Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November. By the time this official status was bestowed on the holiday, the iconography of pilgrims and turkeys was already taking shape thanks to literary efforts like Hale’s and the reprints from Plymouth.
