Thanksgiving – November 23, 2003
Today in this venerable setting of our nation’s capital, we remember with thanksgiving those who went before. We look back through history that we might more fully appreciate today’s blessings and tomorrow’s promise.
In this country we celebrate Thanksgiving every autumn. This holiday hearkens back to 1621 when the pilgrims of Plymouth invited their Indian friends to join them for a festival of feasting in gratitude for the bounty of the season.
More than 160 years later, the colonies, now a nation of united states, had won a revolutionary war of independence. The first president of the new country recommended a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. George Washington wrote that the purpose of his Thanksgiving Proclamation was “to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.”[1]
Seventy-four years after that first proclamation, the nation was entrenched in a bloody civil war. Brother fought against brother as the nation struggled to survive. During these dark days of heartache and despair, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday to be celebrated each November. Lincoln knew that gratitude could help heal the nation’s wounds. Even though divided by ideology and conflict, our nation could be united in acknowledging the benevolent hand of God. In his Thanksgiving proclamation, President Lincoln wrote: “It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gracious gifts of the Most High God] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people… [We] fervently implore…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.”2
These three historical periods—the pilgrims and Indians, George Washington and a newly formed nation, and Abraham Lincoln amid the Civil War—are linked by a common theme. Difficulty and discord call forth profound gratitude. Wisdom teaches that thankfulness has sustaining power that during hard times, at all times, we must look to the gracious hand of God and give thanks.
Program #3875
[1] In William J. Bennett, ed. Our Sacred Honor, (1997), 386.
2Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1859-1865,sel. Don E. Fehrenbacher (1989), 520-21.