November 26 · This Day in America
The country is eight months old and held together with hope and twine. So President Washington asks for something simple: one day, set aside, for the whole people to be grateful in the same direction. By his proclamation it falls on Thursday, the 26th of November. There is no football, no parade, no turkey on a White House table — there is barely a government. Washington goes to St. Paul's Chapel, then sends beer and food to men locked in a debtors' prison so they can mark the day too. It is less a feast than an idea: that a fractious, untested republic might pause and acknowledge it has been carried this far. The holiday will travel two and a half centuries from this quiet Thursday. The gratitude was the point. It still is.
Source: www.mountvernon.org
Also on this day · 1942
Warner Bros. had no reason to hurry — until Allied troops stormed ashore in North Africa and a city named Casablanca was suddenly in every headline. So the studio fast-tracked its little wartime romance to the Hollywood Theatre on Thanksgiving week, 1942. Bogart tells Bergman to get on the plane. A theater full of Americans, with sons overseas, learns that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans. It becomes immortal.
Source: www.history.com
“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th. day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789