Thanksgiving stuffed with flags
By James Breig
In 1863, 150 years ago, the midpoint of the Civil War brought the Battle of Gettysburg, the Gettysburg Address – and a Thanksgiving proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln.
Although written by his Secretary of State, the document went out as “by the President of the United States of America,” who invited “my fellow citizens in every part of the United States…to set apart and observe…a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
While modern Americans tend to think of the holiday as being about turkey, football and relatives, Thanksgiving was formerly known as a time of prayer and patriotism. Around a century ago, the holiday was often associated with flags:
*In 1895, citizens of Trenton, N.J., dedicated a 100-foot flagpole and flags in a town park. One of the banners was 20 by 36 feet and featured 13 stars for the original colonies.
*In 1897 in Alabama, a newspaper noted that “one of the most interesting features…Thanksgiving…was the presentation of a large flag to the city schools.”
*In 1913, children from two to 12 were treated to a late-autumn Fourth of July in a New Orleans park. The Thanksgiving Day event included ice cream and cake – and a flag-raising ceremony during which the kids sang “America.”
*In 1915, as World War I raged in Europe, students in a Catholic school in Miami, Florida, took part in a flag-raising ceremony that included the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” an address titled “Our Flag” and an early version of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Like this year, the holiday fell in 1913 on Nov. 28, when the ultimate connection between Thanksgiving and flags might have occurred in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the annual Pan-American Thanksgiving Celebration to mark “unity between the United States and 21 Latin republics.”
President Woodrow Wilson took part, joined by Supreme Court justices and other dignitaries. The church where the ceremony was held was decorated “with American and Latin flags,” a newspaper noted. “The dove of peace holding together in its beak the flag of the United States and that of the Pan-American Union symbolized the peace of the western hemisphere.”
Next Thanksgiving might be a good time to revive the association of the holiday and flags.