However, Thursday was a lecture day in Boston.
Friday was ruled out because it was the fast day of the Catholic Church and any day of prayer held on a Friday would have had Rome-ish overtones. Since Saturday was occupied with preparations for the Sabbath, and Monday was the day just after, these were not convenient choices. Puritans observe the Sabbath as a biblical ordinance and did not intrude their Thanksgivings upon it. The 1984 book Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, an American History by Diana Karter Appelbaum explains why the other days of the week fell out of consideration among 17th-century Bostonians:Īt first no particular day of the week was reserved for Thanksgiving, but some days thought more appropriate than others. For example, leaders of the colony of Plymouth, Mass., called for a day of Thanksgiving in 1623 at the end of a severe drought when they felt like their prayers for rain had been answered.īut, as it turns out, those sporadic days of thanks tended to fall on Thursdays. Much-needed good weather or a victory in a skirmish with Native Americans - with whom, contrary to the more mythical Thanksgiving story, peace was the exception to the rule - might earn a mention from a colony’s governor, and a special day would be set aside, but when that day fell would obviously depend on what had happened.
“The earliest Thanksgivings in the colonies in the 17th century were called for the purpose of giving thanks for a specific blessing,” says Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Crucially, they weren’t just a once-a-year special event. Get Friday off as well and it’s the rare four-day weekend go back to work and it’s just a hassle for travel.īut, as it turns out, the earliest Thanksgivings in what’s now the United States had very different timing. For Americans, the timing of the Thanksgiving holiday - the fourth Thursday in November - can be a blessing or a curse.
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