Behind the Holiday: Thanksgiving

The holiday we call Thanksgiving has been around for 400 years, but there haven't been 400 Thanksgiving celebrations. In fact, it took more than two centuries for it to become an official national holiday, thanks to Abraham Lincoln and an impassioned author and advocate named Sarah Josepha Hale. While it's one of our nation's most beloved holidays, most of us know precious little about the 1621 event that started it all. This is the unvarnished, true story of Thanksgiving and its evolving role in American culture over the last century.