I was reading in the Sunday Rutland Herald about the days when Vermont farmers would walk their birds to Boston each fall in a large turkey drive. According to the story, the birds would fall asleep promptly when the sun set, which led to problems when they walked through long covered bridges -- there would often be a turkey traffic jam and the farmers would be required to carry the sleeping birds to the other side of the bridge.

This led me to look up some details about Thanksgiving in Vermont.

In 1789 Washington became the first President to declare a national day of thanksgiving. It wasn't called Thanksgiving Day. Washington just asked his countrymen to spend "a national day in worship and prayer giving thanks to Almighty God for the blessings bestowed upon us". There were numerous other harvest festivals celebrated in different ways, on different dates, and in different places throughout the newly-formed country.

Vermont was one of those places with its own ways. In 1827 the editor and publisher of "Godey's Ladies Book and Ladies Magazine," a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, decided to act. She began a campaign to designate a national Thanksgiving Day that would be observed by every state on the same day across the country. As you might expect, there were those that didn't want to go along with the national plan, and Vermont was part of the resistance. Even as late as 1852, Virginia and Vermont were still bucking the trend and doing things their own way.

Lincoln finally made it official by declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday. Since then, the date has shifted a bit, but basically corresponds to the general time of the harvest feast days that long preceeded it. The date shifting has occurred mostly due to business and the desire to make more money.

During the Depression, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the fourth Thursday in November to the third Thursday. It was changed at the request of merchants who felt it would stimulate more Christmas shopping.

Citizens rebelled, continuing to celebrate it on the fourth Thursday and in 1941 the people won. The official day of celebration returned to its original day.

Vermont has another depression-era story to tell regarding Thanksgiving, again involving labor and industry. This comes from the Library of Congress' American Memories web site

The Worker's Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving didn't always mark a joyous respite from work. Here, in a Depression-era interview, a marble worker in Vermont tells the story of a Thanksgiving Day uprising at the Proctor marble quarry, staged during the early days of labor organizing:

The time we took over Proctor we showed them our strength, though. It was Thanksgiving, and mighty little Thanksgiving for some of us. Some of the men and women wanted to go out to Proctor while the Proctors were enjoying their big dinner, and show them how little their workers had to be thankful for. I tried to discourage them, but when I found they were determined to go, I went along, with a lot of my friends, to keep them from getting tough. So hundreds of us landed into Proctor . The sheriffs and deputies tried to stop us, and we got the bunch of them and locked them up and took the town over. Then we paraded all afternoon through the streets. The next day the company unloaded a gang of deputies into Proctor and from then on nobody could stand on the corner, or collect in even twos or threes, without being busted up.

Finally, take a look here for Rev. Charles Walker's Thanksgiving Sermon at Centre Congregational Church in 1844 as reported by the Vermont Phoenix:

Mr Walker then spoke of the political condition of our country. We have just passed through a Presidential contest of great and dangerous excitement. The most corrupting influences have been brought to bear upon the popular mind. Good men look forward with dread and dismay at the repetition of such scenes every four years, and feel that unless some new and better mode is devised for electing President, we shall soon have none to elect.

Another dangerous element in our political condition is the political influence of foreigners, who have poured themselves in ever swelling floods upon our shores. Brought up in ignorance and superstition -the devoted subjects of a foreign ecclesiastical tyranny - unacquainted with our laws and customs, - they have been readily admitted to the powers and privileges of citizenship, till the political power of the country seems fast sliding into their hands. Our dearest and most cherished liberties and institutions are in imminent danger, and unless the alarm be given and taken, and men, American-born and educated, come to the rescue, it will soon be too late - if it is not already - to save them from utter destruction.

A still greater evil threatens our country's peace and liberties - the over-grown influence of the slave power. This power is selfish, jealous, rapacious and domineering. Its influence is every where felt, and felt only for evil. Rights the most sacred are trampled upon, and obligations the most solemn, despised and set at defiance. This power is wielded by few, and wielded only for its own aggrandizement, and with a despotic tyranny that scarcely has an equal in the annals of history. - Unless this power shall be shorn of its strength, and slavery itself be put an end to, the future will indeed look dark and foreboding.

Add in the fact that Thanksgiving is a national day of mourning for many Native Americans and one can see that Thanksgiving in Vermont has a history that goes far beyond relatives getting together, watching parades and football games, and a big meal.

Got a tradition to share? Feel free to comment.