Thanksgiving: Why on a Thursday:

Sarah Josepha Hale, an influential magazine editor, poet, and the “mother” of  the national Thanksgiving

(who never during her ardent advocacy cited the 1621 event) once explained why Thursday

was the best day for Thanksgiving:

“Because then the agricultural labors of the year are generally completed; the elections are over; those autumnal diseases which usually prevail more or less at the South have ceased, and the summer wanderers gathered to their homes. . . .Thursday is the most convenient day of week for a domestic Holiday.”

Sarah Josepha Hale also noted that George Washington selected a Thursday when he issued first Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation–Nov. 26, 1789–to mark adoption of U.S. Constitution. (The bobble

head of SJH is sold by the New Hampshire Historical Society.)