Many Americans think of
Thanksgiving as a wonderful time to celebrate getting out of school for a long
weekend, and eating a great dinner. Or, maybe they think it is the start of the
Christmas holiday season. We can trace this historic American Christian tradition to the year 1623. After the harvest
crops were gathered in November 1623, Governor William Bradford of the 1620
Pilgrim Colony, “Plymouth Plantation” in Plymouth, Massachusetts proclaimed:
"All
ye Pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather
at the Meeting House, on the hill… there
to listen to the pastor, and render Thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all
His blessings."
We
must not forget that the Pilgrims were well steeped in the Bible. Gov.
Bradford's idea for a celebration of thanksgiving was inspired by the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles, one of Israel's
three major feasts, also known as the Feast of Ingathering or Booths.
For
the pilgrims, they must have seen the connection between their own exodus with that of the Jewish
people: the flight from the land of persecution; the perilous journey
through a wilderness; the divine
protection of God who provided food, water, safety; and the settlement in
the promised land.
They
also were befriended by the native Indians of the Piscataway and Yoacomaco tubes. Interestingly, these tribes believed in one true God and offered a thanksgiving
ritual of first fruits at their harvest time. The Maryland colonists would
continue to offer thanksgiving festivals.
This
is the origin of our annual Thanksgiving Day celebration. Congress of the
United States has proclaimed National
Days of Thanksgiving to Almighty God many times throughout the following
years. On November 1, 1777, by order of Congress, the first National
Thanksgiving Proclamation was proclaimed, and signed by Henry Laurens,
President of Continental Congress. The third Thursday of December, 1777 was
thus officially set aside:
"…for
solemn thanksgiving and praise. That with one heart and one voice the good
people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of
their Divine Benefactor;… and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits
of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them (their manifold sins)
out of remembrance… That it may please
Him… to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating
the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety under His nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for
the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth
of 'righteousness, peace and joy in the
Holy Ghost'…"
George
Washington, first President of the United States Then again, on January 1,
1795, our first United States President, George Washington, wrote his famed
National Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he says that it is…
"…our
duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to
acknowledge our many and great
obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue is… our duty as
a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our
many and great obligations to Almighty
God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we
experienced…"
Thursday,
the 19th day of February, 1795 was thus set aside by George Washington as a
National Day of Thanksgiving.
Many
years later, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by Act of
Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving "on the last Thursday of
November, as a day of Thanksgiving and
Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the
heavens." In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President says
that it is…
"…announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven
by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten
the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our
hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and
virtue of our own… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as
with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people…"
So it is that on Thanksgiving Day each
year, Americans give thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings and mercies
toward us throughout the year.