The Library will be open for the following hours next week:
Chico Center:
Monday 9:00am- 9:30pm
Tuesday 8:00am- 9:30pm
Wednesday 9:00am – 3:00pm
Main:
8:00am - 5:00pm Monday - Wednesday
We're wishing everyone a happy and relaxed Thanksgiving! Speaking of which, let's talk a little bit about the woman who spent decades lobbying for Thanksgiving to be a national holiday. Sarah Josepha Hale was from New England, where a feast at harvest time was a yearly tradition -- as it is around much of the world. Hale hoped that establishing it as a national holiday would help to unify Americans and ease rising tensions between North and South. The idea gained in popularity and by the mid-1850s was established in several states, but it still wasn't a national holiday. You can read a letter Hale wrote to President Lincoln in 1863 (the text of the letter is below the photo), urging him to issue a proclamation instead of waiting years for the idea to go through Congress.
What I find fascinating about this history is that Hale does not seem to have connected her idea of a Thanksgiving harvest feast to early American history at all. She never mentions Native Americans, or Puritans, or Pilgrims. All of that stuff must have accrued later, much as the popular image of Santa Claus only accrued around the holiday of Christmas in the late 1880s and afterwards. The original idea of Thanksgiving was a simple harvest festival which would unite all Americans in enjoying a day off together with family.
But Sarah Josepha Hale did not just spend her days lobbying for a holiday -- that was about the least interesting thing she did. She was a strong influence in American life for forty years (1837 - 1877) as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, one of the most popular magazines of the 19th century, and in its pages she wrote in a friendly, accessible style, advocating for all sorts of changes. Hale's goal, at all times, was the betterment of women's condition. Education was first and most important in her thoughts, but everything else was included too; if she could think or hear of something that would help people, she would advocate for it, and was often the first to do so. The list includes: 
- women teachers in public schools
- college for women (she helped organize Vassar)
- property rights for married women
- better working conditions and reduction of child labor
- playgrounds for children
- physical exercise for women
- public health and sanitation
- inventions to help with housework
Hale was a friend to Edgar Allan Poe and often published his work, along with many other now-classic writers, and she also published stories about historical women when few others did. Her trick was to keep her readers' confidence by playing the part of an eminently traditional and respectable woman. Hale's style was not to demand or to confront; it was to propose and to advocate, and most often to write as though everybody already agreed with her; and she wasn't above a bit of flattery in a good cause. This friendly, non-confrontational style -- completely wrapped in Victorianism -- was so popular and enduring that she effected massive changes without anybody really noticing very much.
Oh yes, and she wrote a whole lot of novels and poetry, including "Mary Had a Little Lamb." In fact, that's how she got her start in the literary world -- writing poetry for children. Hale was lucky enough to have parents who were interested in educating their daughters as well as their sons, and when she married, she and her husband enjoyed reading aloud to each other in the evenings. Left a widow with five children after only nine years of marriage, she used her talents to support her family by writing poetry and novels. She went on to edit a minor women's magazine before gaining her post at Godey's Lady's Book and continued working until she was 89 years old.
Credit: James Reid Lambdin/Wikimedia Commons
With only three weeks left in the semester finals will soon be upon us. Here are a few ways the library can help student prepare for finals:
We offer many other services and resources. Stop by the library today to find out more!