Thanksgiving Facts

November 25, 2010

Interview with Lee Hendler, Founder of Freedom’s Feast

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Mike Carruthers:
You think you know the story of Thanksgiving but some facts you may have missed.

Lee Hendler:
The first Thanksgiving feast, as it were, was, we think a harvest meal shared by the Plymouth pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indian tribe in 1621.
 

Lee Hendler, Founder of Freedoms Feast, which I'll tell you about in just a minute.

Then, the first national Thanksgiving Day was on November 26th 1789 and it was designated by President George Washington as a way to give thanks for the establishment of a formal government. And to give thanks actually for the Constitution - which is something that people don't know or realize at all.

But Thanksgiving still didn't become a national holiday until October 3rd 1863.

In the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln hoped that it would heal the wounds of our nation; and again be a time for Americans to renew our pledge to the Constitution and our common purpose.

Interestingly President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday after a forty year lobbying effort by Sarah Josepha Hale.

Who was the editor of the Ladies Home Journal? She was the one who proposed that turkey and cranberries and potatoes be the main staple of that celebratory meal.