United States · November 26, 2026

Thanksgiving

The fourth Thursday of November — a national day of thanks, kept since 1863.

What happened

Harvest thanksgivings are older than the country: the 1621 gathering at Plymouth, shared by the colonists and the Wampanoag, is the one usually told. It was not an annual holiday then. Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for a national day for almost forty years, and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. Congress fixed it to the fourth Thursday in 1941.

Why it stuck

It is the one American holiday whose whole content is gratitude. No gifts, no costumes, no fireworks — just people at a table naming what they are glad of. The Wampanoag side of 1621 is a real history worth telling honestly alongside it, and Native American Heritage Day falls the very next day.

What a family can do

Go around the table and have every person, including the smallest, name one thing. Write them on a card and keep it — next year, read last year's card first.

Questions to work through

1. Sarah Josepha Hale wrote letters for 36 years before Thanksgiving became national. What does that tell you about changing something?
2. Find the Wampanoag on a map. Whose land was Plymouth?
3. Lincoln made Thanksgiving national in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. Why then, of all years?
4. Write your own thanksgiving list — ten things, and none of them objects.