A Holiday of Kindness: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Establishment of ThanksgivingEvery year, during the last Thursday of November, we exclaim: "Happy Thanksgiving!" This wish conveys the hope, fellowship, thankfulness, and kindness of the season.
However, this kind, annual wish was not started during a feast between the Indians and the first Pilgrims, as is typically depicted. The "First Thanksgiving" that is usually celebrated and taught is actually based on a fictional story written in 1895 by Jane G. Austin in her work "Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims."
The first true Thanksgiving was officially established in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Yet most of the credit for the initiation of this holiday goes to a wonderfully patriotic woman, Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879), who is most known for her poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb."...
Source: A Holiday of Kindness: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Establishment of Thanksgiving (https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-holiday-of-kindness-sarah-josepha-hale-and-the-establishment-of-thanksgiving_4796504.html)