Late bit about Thanksgiving

I thought I would post a recent article I wrote on Thanksgiving and the origins of it for your reading pleasure...

This month we celebrate a favorite holiday for many Americans, Thanksgiving Day, a day that is usually filled with family, food, and football—and all in large quantities too! Americans have been enjoying this holiday annually ever since Abraham Lincoln officially pronounced it a national holiday in 1863 (though its roots extend much further back, as we will soon see). Of all the holidays that we observe as a nation—and you may be surprised to hear me say this—I believe that Thanksgiving may be the most religious.

I know what you’re thinking: “What about Christmas and Easter?” I admit it is true that Christmas and Easter can and ought to carry a more explicitly Christian message. But I think it is also true that this message has been glossed over to such a degree that it is in danger of being lost altogether by the rampant secularism and materialism of our day. Christmas and Easter today are rarely, if ever, about Jesus. Instead, they are about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, stockings and Easter baskets, expensive gifts, candy, and egg nog. But Thanksgiving is different. Despite the pervasive influences of secularism and materialism in our world, Thanksgiving has remained focused upon God and His gifts.

From the very beginning, Thanksgiving was oriented in a God-ward direction. In 1621, the governor of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusets, William Bradford, ordered the first observance of Thanksgiving in order to give thanks and praise to God for the colony’s first harvest. The first American observance of this holiday was instituted by the Continental Congress in 1777, following the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America. Over the next 30 years, 6 proclamations establishing a national day of thanksgiving were made by George Washington, John Adams, and James Madison (each made 2). Typical of these early proclamations was that given by George Washington in 1789, in which he clearly states the religious purposes of his calling for the holiday (which, in case you’re curious, was set for November 26, 1789). It was to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them [the people of the United States of America] an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” There is no escaping the explicitly Christian orientation of these original thanksgiving days.

When Abraham Lincoln officially pronounced Thanksgiving Day to be a national holiday celebrated annually, he did so with the following words: “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and 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 the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.” Again there is no escaping the explicitly Christian orientation of this holiday.

As we celebrate our Thanksgiving Days, let us not forget its explicitly Christian heritage. Let us remember this heritage by remembering the reason it was established and celebrated in the first place—to give thanks and praise to our great God and Savior for His bountiful provision to us.

He has indeed been good to us!