 We reveal the truth behind the Thanksgiving holiday. Every year, Miss Susie's fourth grade class puts on feather-head dresses and buckled hats to celebrate Thanksgiving traditions. This year, she wants to teach her kids the lesser-known facts about Thanksgiving. Her students know that families sailed from England in 1620 seeking religious freedom. The native people taught settlers how to grow crops. And when the harvest became plentiful, they thanked the gods with a three-day festival. Similar rituals are celebrated around the world. But there are fascinating reasons why Thanksgiving became a federal holiday in the U.S. Miss Susie explains how the first documented feast didn't officially start the tradition and Thanksgiving wasn't recognized until George Washington declared it in 1789. But that didn't carry on and the ritual was lost for years. Then, a 19th-century writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, famous for Mary Had a Little Lamb, read a pilgrim's diary and was inspired by their festivals of hunting and eating. She wrote to presidents for 30 years in an effort to campaign for unity until finally Abraham Lincoln responded, seeing it as a viable plan for peace during the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried moving Thanksgiving up a calendar week during the Great Depression as an attempt to boost pre-Christmas sales. That only lasted for three years before fixing the date to the last Thursday of November where it remains today. In 1989, George H. Bush sent a turkey off to retirement, never to be eaten. This new tradition, dubbed The Pardoning of the Turkey, is Miss Susie's favorite tradition. She's a vegetarian. Miss Susie and her class are now learning more about Sarah Josepha Hale, the true hero of Thanksgiving and celebrating with a vegetarian feast. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!