National Library Legislative Day 2024 is on Sunday, May 5, 2024: Which U.S. president made Thanksgiving a national holiday?

Sunday, May 5, 2024 is National Library Legislative Day 2024. District of Columbia Library Association - National Library ... National Library Legislative Day

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George Washington and the First Official Thanksgiving for the United States of America

It is a well known fact of Thanksgiving Day history that the first thanksgiving (at least in America) was celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. However, the first

time Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the United States was when President George Washington issued his now famous Thanksgiving Day Proclamation. The Thanksgiving Day tradition thus began.

Thanksgiving Day Tradition

Following 1621, it became customary for various colonies (and later states) to issue calls for national days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. Sometimes, these days would feature celebratory meals, but usually the focus was on meditative prayer and thanksgiving. According to the American history website Archiving Early America, "A Thanksgiving Day two hundred years ago was a day set aside for prayer and fasting, not a day marked by plentiful food and drink as is today's custom."

During the American Revolution, legislative calls for fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving intensified. According to the Library of Congress, "National days of thanksgiving and of 'humiliation, fasting, and prayer' were proclaimed by Congress at least twice a year throughout the war." This was in addition to those calls issued by state assemblies.

Nat'l Prayer Day - Do you think this is profound & beautiful too?

Too long......

National Prayer Day can suck it.

Why do some people incorrectly believe the USA to be a christian nation founded by christians?

Its not incorrect. Study history, read the writings of our founders. Stop getting your information from websites that have an agenda to destroy this great country. Try government websites and historical websites if you want the truth.

Library of Congress Website.

The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.

Congress appointed chaplains for itself and the armed forces, sponsored the publication of a Bible, imposed Christian morality on the armed forces, and granted public lands to promote Christianity among the Indians. National days of thanksgiving and of "humiliation, fasting, and prayer" were proclaimed by Congress at least twice a year throughout the war. Congress was guided by "covenant theology," a Reformation doctrine especially dear to New England Puritans, which held that God bound himself in an agreement with a nation and its people. This agreement stipulated that they "should be prosperous or afflicted, according as their general Obedience or Disobedience thereto appears." Wars and revolutions were, accordingly, considered afflictions, as divine punishments for sin, from which a nation could rescue itself by repentance and reformation.

The first national government of the United States, was convinced that the "public prosperity" of a society depended on the vitality of its religion. Nothing less than a "spirit of universal reformation among all ranks and degrees of our citizens," Congress declared to the American people, would "make us a holy, that so we may be a happy people."

Read the proclamations they passed.

Original document at the Library of Congress

Adams's Fast Day Proclamation

John Adams continued the practice, begun in 1775 and adopted under the new federal government by Washington, of issuing fast and thanksgiving day proclamations. In this proclamation, issued at a time when the nation appeared to be on the brink of a war with France, Adams urged the citizens to "acknowledge before God the manifold sins and transgressions with which we are justly chargeable as individuals and as a nation; beseeching him at the same time, of His infinite grace, through the Redeemer of the World, freely to remit all our offences, and to incline us, by His Holy Spirit, to that sincere repentance and reformation which may afford us reason to hope for his inestimable favor and heavenly benediction."

Fast Day Proclamation, March 23, 1798.

You will also find out that church services were held in congress, the supreme court building, and communion services were held in the treasury building. Presidents including Adams, Jefferson, and Madison attended church services in the congress.

Reserved Seats at Capitol Services

Here is a description, by an early Washington "insider," Margaret Bayard Smith (1778-1844), a writer and social critic and wife of Samuel Harrison Smith, publisher of the National Intelligencer, of Jefferson's attendance at church services in the House of Representatives: "Jefferson during his whole administration was a most regular attendant. The seat he chose the first day sabbath, and the adjoining one, which his private secretary occupied, were ever afterwards by the courtesy of the congregation, left for him."

University of Virginia website: Home of the papers of Thomas Jefferson.

"The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819. ME 19:416

"Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:283

Here is a website where you can read the speeches of all the presidents.

First Inaugural Address (April 30, 1789)

George Washington

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station; it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presi