With Thanksgiving Day fast upon us and our thoughts focused on family, food, and football, it is right to pause and remember the solemn purpose for which the day was first set.
Celebrations to give thanks to God for a blessing bestowed have been held for ages past. The Bible describes many thanksgiving days or feasts, including Noah’s celebration in Genesis after the flood waters receded, the feast of first fruits in Exodus to celebrate the spring harvest, and the feast of a household in Luke to celebrate the return of the prodigal son.
Our Founders saw the hand of Providence frequently at work in the Revolution and its aftermath, and gave thanks accordingly. In 1776, we declared our independence “with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence.” In 1777, after the decisive American victory at Saratoga, the Continental Congress, in recognition of the “superintending providence of Almighty God,” officially set aside a day “for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings in their heart and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor . . . .”
In September 1789, the first United States Congress convened under the recently ratified Constitution passed a resolution asking President Washington to designate a day for the new nation to give thanks for its founding. The president responded by issuing a proclamation declaring November 26, 1789, as a “Day of Publick Thanksgiving.”
In his proclamation, issued in New York City on October 3, President Washington asked all Americans to devote the 26th of November to the service of God, “That we might all then unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks . . . [for all our blessings, including] . . . the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted . . . .”
The national constitution of government “lately instituted” included the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights, approved by Congress days before on the 25th of September. The First Amendment, ultimately ratified by the necessary number of states in 1791, protects the “free exercise” of religion, our individual liberty to call upon God and give thanks to God as we each may choose to do. This ringing commitment to religious liberty underscores the seriousness and transcendent significance of President Washington’s proclamation of a day for national thanksgiving.
Subsequent presidents issued thanksgiving proclamations, but the days and even the months of the celebrations varied. It was not until the administration of Abraham Lincoln that Thanksgiving Day came to be a national holiday celebrated each year in November.
In early October 1863, with the pivotal victory at Gettysburg in mind, and just weeks before his address to dedicate the national cemetery there, President Lincoln issued a proclamation asking his fellow citizens “in every part of the United States . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving . . . [and] . . . with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience . . . fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
Our times have been beset by fractious partisanship. We should, therefore, pause this week and give heartfelt thanks for all the great and good things we have, with God’s help, been able to accomplish together as self-governing Americans. We should give thanks for the liberties bequeathed to us by those who founded and re-founded our nation over the years and through many tribulations.
If we do this and take our inspiring past to heart, we will be better able to overcome our recent divisions and work together to revitalize our unifying institutions of constitutional government. And if, with God’s help, we do succeed in this vital work, we then can enjoy again the peace, harmony, and tranquility that blesses a truly united people.
As Americans, we have a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, and every single day of the year.
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