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From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States of America. Annually, Americans celebrate this unique holiday on the fourth Thursday of November; it is frequently celebrated as a large feast with family and friends. The holiday honors the "First Thanksgiving", which was a harvest feast held in Plymouth in 1621. The modern holiday is largely the work of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Boston's Ladies' Magazine, who in 1827 wrote her first in a series of editorials calling for a national, annual day of Thanksgiving to commemorate the Pilgrim's first harvest feast. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the first modern Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday in November. It was moved by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the next-to-last Thursday in November. In 1941, the holiday was recognized by Congress as an official federal holiday, to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.