Author’s Note: This post is a few years old, but I can’t improve on the “true story” of Thanksgiving. Other than to say she apparently lobbied for pumpkin pie, but that’s another story.
Mary had a turkey browned
Hale’s famous poem, variation by kajmeister
From three hours in the oven
Her guests were drooling all the while
For gravy and the stuffin’
Perhaps Americans would still have invented Thanksgiving without Sarah Josepha Hale. After all, proclamations of Thanksgiving had been declared by the Continental Congresses by Samuel Adams and John Hanson and the like:
It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up their supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for His gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner, to give Him praise for His goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of His Providence in their behalf; therefore, the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of Divine goodness to these States in the course of the important conflict, in which they have been so long engaged and so on and so forth etcetera etcetera etcetera…
November 1782, text for the Thanksgiving or National Prayer Day observation (Wikipedia)
That seems a rather dry plateful of harvest to start with, taking some 250 words until it even gets to the Thanksgiving part of the equation. Why, there’s hardly any gravy at all, although there does seem to be quite a bit of lard in it, so maybe the pies were flaky.
Continue reading “The Mother of Thanksgiving”
