[Rhodes22-list] The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving

[R22RumRunner at aol.com]

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 
A special greeting at Thanksgiving time to express  our best wishes for a 
happy and healthy Thanksgiving Day  and a joyous holiday season.   
The Real Meaning of  Thanksgiving  
As we all enjoy turkey and the trimmings this  Thanksgiving, you may be 
interested to know that  the first Thanksgiving celebration in America was  a 
completely religious observance that didn't  include a feast. 

It occurred in 1619 --  more than a year before the Pilgrims arrived from  
Massachusetts. A group of 38 English settlers  arrived in Virginia and set aside 
a day to give  thanks to God for their safe passage. The  three-day festival 
of food and friendship that was  the origin of Thanksgiving as we know it 
today  didn't occur until 1621.

Not Just a  Private Celebration, a Public Thanks to God  
Ever since, Thanksgiving has been a time for  Americans not just to celebrate 
privately in our  homes but to give public thanks to God -- and not  just for 
our material blessings but for our  freedom. Our earliest Thanksgivings were 
in times  when that freedom was at its most vulnerable.  

In 1789, George Washington issued a  proclamation calling for a day of 
"public  thanksgiving and prayer" -- a day for Americans to  acknowledge "the many 
signal favors of Almighty  God, especially by affording them an opportunity  
peaceably to establish a form of government for  their safety and happiness."

But Washington  didn't just say that individual Americans should  thank God. 
He proclaimed that nations --  especially the one-year-old United States of  
America -- have obligations to God as well. He  wrote, "It is the duty of all 
Nations 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."

Lincoln Makes It a Yearly  Celebration

But it wasn't until more  than 70 years later -- at a time when America  
faced its greatest crisis -- that Thanksgiving  became a yearly celebration.

The Civil War  was raging. Three months earlier, the Battle of  Gettysburg 
had left 50,000 Americans killed,  wounded or missing. Riots were tearing apart  
American cities.

In the midst of this  chaos, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in  October 
1863 that the last Thursday of November  should henceforth be set aside as a 
day of  thanksgiving.

Lincoln acknowledged that the  nation was "in the midst of a civil war of  
unequaled magnitude and severity." But he focused  instead on the nation's 
blessings, urging his  fellow Americans to remember that "No human  counsel hath 
devised, nor hath any mortal hand  worked out these great things. They are the  
gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while  dealing with us in anger for 
our sins, hath  nevertheless remembered mercy."

And  Lincoln, too, proclaimed that all Americans set  aside the day for a 
public expression of gratitude  to God. He wrote, "It has seemed to me fit  and 
proper that they [gifts of God] should be  solemnly, reverently, and gratefully 
acknowledged  as with one heart and one voice by the whole  American people." 



May the good things of life be yours in abundance, at  Thanksgiving and 
throughout the coming year.  
Rummy



















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