Though we have images of the Puritans and Native Americans sharing a harvest feast, Thanksgiving wasn't marked on a special day until 1863.

Prior to that - President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789, as an official holiday of “sincere and humble thanks.” The nation then celebrated its first Thanksgiving under its new Constitution - but it wasn't consistently observed nationwide.

It was President Lincoln who chose to announce, in the midst of the Civil War, a national day of thanksgiving that would be marked on the last Thursday in November.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in December 1941, signed the legislation making Thanksgiving into a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November.

As reported in the Port Jervis newspaper, THE EVENING GAZETTE, 

on Oct. 23, 1917:

FASTING TO BE URGED FOR THANKSGIVING

Hoover Advocates Emulation of

the Pilgrims of Plymouth.

Washington, Oct. 23.—Thanksgiving

as a day of fasting rather than of

feasting will be advocated this year

by the food administration, with a

strong prospect that the president in

his proclamation may designate the

final Thursday of November as a fast day.

It is pointed out that the first

Thanksgiving day, celebrated in the

autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims at

Plymouth, was a fast day. For many

years thereafter the annual Puritan

holiday was a fast day, and the development

into a time of feasting

came only after the little colony of

Massachusetts had become a successful

and a growing community.

Herbert C. Hoover, the food administrator,

looks upon the movement for

a "turkeyless Thanksgiving" as a

clean cut movement in the right direction,

so far as food conservation is

concerned. Great feast days, like all

great holidays, are productive of a

greater waste, greater extravagance

and needless expenditure of needed

commodities, in his opinion.

Throughout the United States the

annual recognition of the one time

local holiday of old New England has

grown to be a season of inordinate feasting.

The food administration believes

that if the Thanksgiving wastage

should be cut from the calendar this

year it would mean in actual conservation

of foodstuffs a saving of approximately

the food supply of 24 hours for

the entire 110,000,000 dwellers under

the Stars and Stripes.

Last week's snow showers, hint that winter is fast approaching. 

Here's something you can make to decorate your home for the Holidays:

https://www.va.gov/