Should We Tinker With Thanksgiving Day??

I am a Canadian and love having Thanksgiving in October. The weather is nice and can be crisp or even warm. The leaves are wonderful and smell wonderful. The harvest table is fresh and bountiful. The food served was last tasted at Christmas or New Year’s so is very anticipated. It’s just the right amount of time for students to return home and visit their family and friends. It’s a harvest holiday that happens during harvest. Your Thanksgiving is getting lost to Christmas – change it and enjoy the fruits (and veg) of soil, water, sun and labour.

What is interesting is that in the 1991 Farmers’ Almanac, my Dad and I launched an effort to consider moving Thanksgiving to October. The story was picked up in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and I was flown to CBS News in Washington D.C. for an on-air debate about the pros and cons. The volume of mail was incredible. So, our story was titled “Should We Tinker With Thanksgiving?” Here were our arguments for making the change:

* The date – the first Thanksgiving was actually celebrated in Plymouth Colony in December 1621. There is no official date for Thanksgiving. It actually commemorates the activity of giving thanks for our bounty (food). Initially, different states celebrated it on different dates.

* Timing – By late November, the trees have lost their leaves, fields and orchards are bare and the wind whisks us indoors vs enjoying more time outside. We seem to have lost the sense of timing. The harvest season is long gone and the time we set aside for Thanksgiving, is more fro football, Christmas shopping and other activities.

* Weather – In mid October, travel is easier. In fact for much of the country it is warm during the days and crisp at night. Nine out of ten years, weather makes travel to and from the Northern half of the Us difficult, if not impossible.

* Family – Depending upon the date of Thanksgiving, the 2 holidays that bring family together are between 3 and 4 weeks apart. Would t be better to separate the time families come together from great distances by months instead of weeks?

Thanksgiving has been an official holiday since the days of George Washington, who, in 1789, issued the first proclamation of Thanksgiving to honor the new national constitution. In the 1860s, Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady Book, mounted a vigorous campaign for a national Thanksgiving Day to be the same each year from coast to coast. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national Thanksgiving Day.

For the next seven decades (70 years), each U.S. President issued his own proclamation confirming the date. Then, in 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt reset the day as November’s third Thursday. But, in 1941, a resolution was passed to move it to the fourth Thursday of November, and it has remained thus ever since.

So, in 1991 we spoke about the pros and cons and suggested that a study be done to discuss the merits of such a move. As you sit down at your table with family and friends, this Thanksgiving Holiday, what is your reaction to possibly moving the holiday to mid October?? Has Christmas overtaken Thanksgiving? Is it fine the way it is??  What do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving! May this and all the days of the holiday season be a reminder of just how grand life can be. Enjoy.