Mary Had a Little Turkey

If I may talk turkey, let's give credit where credit is due. 

The author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was also the author of Thanksgiving.

Sarah Hale was an early feminist and the editor of Godey’s Lady's Book, the most widely circulated magazine in America before the Civil War.

The war, when it came, incensed Hale, who took it upon herself to write President Lincoln a letter in September 1862 stating that only he had the power to proclaim Thanksgiving a national holiday and “permanently an American custom and institution.”

Heeding Mrs. Hale, five days later Lincoln ordered that, henceforth, the fourth Thursday of November would be marked by the national observation of Thanksgiving.

Turkey Day had long obsessed Hale, who grew up observing it in New Hampshire. 

For more than a decade, she had written yearly editorials in Godey's about the holiday, imploring government officials to fix it forever on the country's calendar.

She believed the national holiday would smooth the bitter rift between the North and South.

It took a bloody war to make Hale's dream come true.

Thanksgiving has fallen ever since on the fourth Thursday of November, except in the years 1939 and '40, when, as a means of combating the Depression, FDR moved it up a week, to extend the Christmas-shopping period.

He caved to criticism two years later, and moved the holiday back to the fourth Thursday of November.

POSTSCRIPT: Did you know "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was based on actual events? As a young woman, Sarah Hale taught elementary school near her home in New Hampshire. A student named Mary brought her pet lamb to school one day, inspiring Hale to write and publish the poem. Forty-six years later, a Mary Elizabeth Sawyer of Sterling, Massachusetts, emerged to claim she was the Mary of the poem, and that a local boy had written it. Sawyer was quickly proven a fraud, but not until Sterling had erected a statue of a lamb in the town center.