Echoes Dispatches From Economic History How Thanksgiving Became
the Holy Day of Consumerism: Echoes When did Thanksgiving, once
the most docile and pious of holidays, turn into the launching
pad for the shopping season? Until the mid-1970s, Black Friday
had always been a notorious Wall Street episode in September
1869, when financier Jay Gould brazenly tried to corner the
nation's gold supply. At the time, the Thanksgiving holiday
itself was only six years old. A writer and editor named Sarah
Josepha Hale, best known for penning "Mary Had a Little Lamb,"
had waged a persistent campaign for decades to create a national
holiday giving thanks for all the blessings bestowed on the U.S.
On Sept. 3, 1863, amid the travails of the Civil War and two
months after the crucial, tide-turning Battle of Gettysburg,
President Abraham Lincoln granted Hale's wish by designating the
last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Although the
holiday soon became one of feasting and celebration, little in
it smacked of commerce