ASPPA Connect Returns Nov. 29

ASPPA Connect will not be appearing on Friday, Nov. 26 as our offices will be closed in observance of Thanksgiving. ASPPA Connect will return on Monday, Nov. 29. We wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Following are a few facts appropriate to the occasion. 

• On Sept. 28, 1789, just before leaving for recess, the first federal Congress that convened under the then-new U.S. Constitution passed a resolution asking that the President of the United States recommend to the nation a day of thanksgiving. A few days later, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789 as a “Day of Publick Thanksgiving.”
• Even during the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln in his Thanksgiving Proclamation found things for which to be thankful, writing: “Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.” He invited his “fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving.”
• With President Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation, Thanksgiving was regularly commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November. On Dec. 26, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a Joint Resolution establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.
• Rather than store it, parade officials released a gigantic dachshund balloon into the air at the conclusion of the 1929 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.