This Woman Convinced Lincoln To Make Thanksgiving A Major Holiday [INFORGRAPHIC]

The More You Know

This Woman Convinced Lincoln To Make Thanksgiving A Major Holiday [INFORGRAPHIC]

10:30 am, November 8th | by Laura Donovan

Now that dreadful Hurricane Sandy and Nor’Easter Athena are out of the way, we can get excited about the hearty meal we’re going to eat on Thanksgiving. It will be a nice change to have something good to look forward to, but before you start thinking about the tasty food you’re going to consume in a couple of weeks, you should think about the fact that a woman convinced Abraham Lincoln to make it a national holiday.

Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote the famous nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” campaigned for Thanksgiving to have a larger presence in the US. A Nationwide Bank infographic reveals that the holiday wasn’t widely celebrated until 1863, and Hale had been pushing for Thanksgiving for almost twenty years. That’s a lot of persistence for a holiday, but writer Hale was determined to mainstream the holiday. What a gal!

As you can imagine, Thanksgiving has quite a dynamic history, so read more about it through the graphic below, and if you haven’t already done so, make your plans for the big day.