The American Thanksgiving begins in 1621 with the Pilgrims celebrating their first harvest and sharing a three-day feast with the indigenous Wampanoag people. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year. In 1777 all 13 colonies held Thanksgiving celebrations. President George Washington, in 1789 during his first term in office, called for a day of “Public Thanksgiving and Prayer.” Congress recommended an annual National Day of Thanksgiving and Washington suggested November 26. After Washington’s presidency, the holiday was celebrated only intermittently for the next 70 years.
Over three days in July of 1863 the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in over 50,000 American casualties. In response to that victory and enormous loss of life, on October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the following proclamation:
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving… And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him …, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
This year, 2023, marks the 160th anniversary of Lincoln’s call for a day of Thanksgiving.
In 1920 the first Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in Philadelphia. The National Football League, then the American Professional Football Association, played its first game on Thanksgiving in 1922. But it was in 1944 that Congress officially moved the holiday to its current place on the calendar, the fourth Thursday in November.
What was Thanksgiving a hundred years ago in Eaton County like? Surprisingly, it would look very familiar to ours of today.
In the Charlotte Republican weekly newspaper dated November 30, 1923, the day after Thanksgiving that year, there were Christmas advertisements on nearly every page, personal mentions about who is visiting who for the holiday, reports on larceny and other crimes, church notices, and stories about stray dogs and adolescent boys causing mischief.
On page one is a four-line poem:
POOR TURKEY!
Life evermore is fed by death
In earth, in field, in sky
And that a rose may breathe its breath
Something must die
Today we have many of the same issues and concerns as Eaton County residents did in 1923. The paper then talks about the uptick in the price of groceries and gasoline. There are reminders that with impending bad weather motorists should check and/or replace their car batteries.
Like many of those residents 100 years ago, the staff of the Charlotte Community Library is anticipating a joyous holiday season and is very, very grateful we can share that celebration with the community, our family, and friends.
Research for this post was done using items found in the Charlotte Community Library’s Michigan Room. The Library is working to make historic Eaton County Newspapers and other local history resources available online and for in-person research.
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