By Reverend Stephen Young
As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving it is appropriate that we reflect upon some voices from the past in order to fully appreciate this special time as a nation.
We can trace the historic tradition of Thanksgiving in our country to the year 1623. After the harvest of crops in November 1623, Governor William Bradford of the Pilgrim Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts (inspired by the harvest festivals established for Israel in the Torah), proclaimed:
“All ye pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather at the meeting
house on the hill ... there listen to the pastor and give thanksgiving to the
Almighty God for all his blessings.”
And then a century and a half later, on November 1, 1777, by order of the U.S. Congress the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation was enacted. The third Thursday of December 1777 was set aside:
“... for solemn thanksgiving and praise. That with one heart and one voice
the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts, and
separate themselves to the service of their divine Benefactor ... that it
might please God through the merits of Jesus Christ to mercifully forgive
and blot out remembrance of their manifold sins. ... 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 Spirit.”
On January 1, 1795, President George Washington wrote his famed National Thanksgiving Proclamation in which he said,
“... 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 and confirm the blessings we experienced. ...”
It was President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation that secured the tradition as we have it today. It was a pivotal year in Lincoln’s life. The Battle of Gettysburg had occurred in July with the loss of over 50,000 lives and it was four months later that he went to the battlefield dedication where he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address.
It was while he was there that Lincoln had a profound experience as he later explained to a friend: “When I left Springfield (to assume the presidency) I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.”
It was during this episode in his life that Lincoln penned his Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he said,
“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence
upon the overruling power of God; To confess their sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; And to recognize the sublime
truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that
those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. ... I do therefore
invite my 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 praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. ...”
With hearts of appreciation let us join our voices with their voices on this Thanksgiving Day.
Rev. Steve Young is the assistant pastor at the Church of the Crucified One in Moretown.
