Using the Thanksgiving generator
Type a name or a line and it comes out in flowing script, ready to paste into a place card design or the family group chat. Style switches to bold, gothic, italic and a few more.
These aren't a font. Each letter is swapped for a Unicode character already drawn that way, so it keeps its look wherever you paste it. There's nothing to install on the laptop you're printing from, either.
For the table and the kids' table
Ideas for the day
Place cards. Put each name in script, print it on card and fold it. A name in script reads well from across a table, and it's easy to redo when someone brings a plus-one at the last minute.
A menu. Bold for the heading and the times, plain letters for the dishes, so an aunt reading without her glasses can still find the gravy.
The kids' table. Write the location of the pie in A1Z26, where each letter is its place in the alphabet, and put the key on the back of a place card. PIE is 16 9 5. For older kids, a Caesar shift or pigpen takes longer to crack.
Between courses, Pig Latin turns a table's worth of cousins into a secret society that everyone can understand.
17 years of letters
Before 1863, each state set its own Thanksgiving, some in October and some as late as January, and much of the South hardly marked it at all.
Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, set out to change that in 1846. She wrote to Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, and none of them acted. Her letter to Abraham Lincoln in 1863 did, and Thanksgiving became a national holiday that year, 17 years after she started.
She'd also written the menu, in a way. Her novel Northwood spends a whole chapter on the meal: roast turkey, stuffing and gravy, chicken pie, pumpkin pie, pickles, cakes and preserves, with cider to drink.
Questions
What's the best font for Thanksgiving place cards?
Script for names, because it looks handwritten and still reads at a distance. Keep it to the names, though, since a whole card in script is hard work to read.
Can I paste these letters into Canva or Word?
Usually, yes. They're Unicode characters rather than a font, so they paste into most apps. A design app that uses its own fonts may be missing a few, so check the preview before you print a stack of cards.
What's a good code for kids at Thanksgiving?
A1Z26 for younger ones, since it only needs counting, then pigpen or a Caesar shift for older kids. Each has a printable chart on its page, which works as the key.
Who made Thanksgiving a national holiday?
Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, after 17 years of letters from the editor Sarah Josepha Hale to five presidents.