It is Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of November when the Pilgrims of Plymouth sat down for a meal with the Wampanoags in 1621. Even though we trace this holiday’s roots back to that first Thanksgiving, most people would be surprised to know that the Day of Thankfulness was not celebrated as a national holiday until later… like 242 years later!

So what caused the national holiday to be officially recognized? It had nothing to do with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. It was made an official holiday because we were in the midst of the Civil War where hundreds of thousands of men had been killed and many more were yet to die. Here are some staggering numbers. Over the four years of the war, 3.2 million Americans were enlisted as soldiers. That was over 20% of the male population at that time. 620,000 were killed. That was 5% of the population. Over 1.1 million were casualties of the war, meaning they were either wounded to the point they could no longer fight, they went missing in action (there are many Civil War MIAs who are still unaccounted for today), or they were captured or killed. It was on a scale we had never encountered before or since.

So why in the middle of this divisive, bloody war was Thanksgiving Day established? It started with a petition from one woman: Sarah Josepha Hale. Mrs. Hale was a writer who had penned a book calledNorthwood: A Tale of New England. In her fictional novel, she described a day of celebration when the main characters’ son returns home from England and they have a Thanksgiving Day meal. In fact, they long for a day when others will have that kind of homecoming celebration, as they put it, "when Thanksgiving will be celebrated together across the nation, it will be a grand spectacle of moral power and human happiness such as the world has never witnessed.” Even though this was a fictional novel, Mrs. Hale had proposed many times that Thanksgiving Day should be recognized nationally. In 1846, she began writing to the presidents of the United States to proclaim the day a national day of thanks. Four presidents ignored her, the fifth did not: President Abraham Lincoln.

By 1863, our nation was two years into the four years of the war. The citizens of our country had grown weary of it all. Despair shrouded the national mood. People needed a reason to hope for a better day and to recount their blessings. They needed to see that there would be a day when sons would come home and there would be a celebration. So when Mrs. Hale’s petition came to President Lincoln, he decided to proclaim Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November (it has since been changed to the fourth Thursday) to be a day set aside to humble ourselves and recount our blessings. Here is a portion of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

You can read the full text of the President’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation here.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I hope you take time to recount your blessings too. And thank you Mr. President for making Thanksgiving a national holiday. We are blessed. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.