Category Archives: Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

On this Thanksgiving, we look back to Thanksgiving seventy years ago, when America and the world gave thanks for final victory, as expressed by President Truman:

In this year of our victory, absolute and final, over German fascism and Japanese militarism; in this time of peace so long awaited, which we are determined wit all the United Nations to make permanent; on this day of our abundance, strength, and achievement; let us give thanks to Almighty Providence for these exceeding blessings.

We have won them with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. But above all we have won them because we cherish freedom beyond riches and even more than life itself.

We give thanks with the humility of free men, each knowing it was the might of no one arm but of all together by which we were saved. Liberty knows no race, creed, or class in our country or in the world. In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed. None have known this better than our very gallant dead, none better than their comrade, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our thanksgiving has the humility of our deep mourning for them, our vast gratitude to them.

Triumph over the enemy has not dispelled every difficulty. Many vital and far-reaching decisions await us as we strive for a just and enduring peace. We will not fail if we preserve, in our own land and throughout the world, that same devotion to the essential freedoms and rights of mankind which sustained us throughout the war and brought us final victory.

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday November 22, 1945, as a day of national thanksgiving. May we on that day, in our homes and in our places of worship, individually and as groups, express our humble thanks to Almighty God for the abundance of our blessings and may we on that occasion rededicate ourselves to those high principles of citizenship for which so many splendid Americans have recently given all.

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon



Happy Franksgiving!

Today is the 75th anniversary of the first Franksgiving, November 23, 1939.  The following week, November 30, was Thanksgiving. Since Lincoln, Presidents had declared the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving. Believing that the short span between Thanksgiving and Christmas would harm retail sales, President Franklin Roosevelt on October 31, 1939, declared that November 23 would be Thanksgiving. The battle lines were drawn. Democrats favored the switch, 52% to 48%. Republicans opposed it 79% to 21%. It was up to state governments to set the actual day during which state employees would be off work, and the actual holiday varied throughout the country. Franklin Roosevelt’s new holiday was quickly dubbed Franksgiving.

Fortunately for the nation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the nation’s turkey crop was “the largest crop in turkey history.” For those families, such as the one shown here, who wished to be non-partisan and celebrate both days, the bounty of the harvest would be able to provide. The caption of this photo notes that “to the children in the household, two Thanksgivings spell double delight, perhaps two turkeys, and tables loaded with cranberries, pies and fruits.”

 


Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon