 Backgrounder on ThanksgivingJohn C DvorakI’m always amused by the cock and bull story about Thanksgiving being about Pilgrims, maize, turkeys and Indians when the holiday stems from an Abe Lincoln proclamation at the behest of a magazine editor. The road to today’s Thanksgiving has had a rocky road, in fact. I’m not sure when the baloney about Pilgrims and Indians actually took hold as folklore, but I find it offensive that it is taught in schools as fact . That said, who is complaining about days off? And I do like a good turkey and gladly spend the extra money for a real old-fashioned bird with real flavor. A great "heritage" turkey actually tastes more like pheasant and does not have that exaggerated turkey stench you get from commercial birds. I’m convinced that the only reason that people are deep fat frying these birds nowadays is to minimize that obnoxious taste and odor only recently bred into the birds. “This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders like this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor. Her letters to Lincoln urged him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.”According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. Fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on October 3 that he complimented Seward on his work. A year later, the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops and since then has disappeared.” Oh, and I apparently bitched about this in 2004 with a snarky, but well-researched piece on the various iterations of Thanksgiving. | 
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