A time for thanks

“To every thing there is a season, and a time for to every purpose under the heaven.” —Ecclesiastes 3:1

As America celebrates Thanksgiving Day 2006, too much is overlooked or forgotten. It is time to remember just what we are celebrating.

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. Steeped in tradition, ordained by Congress and proclaimed by the President, Thanksgiving in America is unlike any other thanksgiving celebration. Only in America is Thanksgiving celebrated with feasting rather than fasting. Only in America is Thanksgiving celebrated with a sense of ostentation rather than humility. Only in America is Thanksgiving a celebration of both history and heritage, tradition and modernity.

Edward Winslow, a member of the original Plymouth colony that celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621, wrote, “... yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

The Pilgrims were Calvinists, followers of Protestant reformer John Calvin. And they were devout.

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate the very roots from which our country grew.

A century and a half after the First Thanksgiving, the colonies which grew from those roots declared independence. There ensued a war for that independence, and that war led to the establishment of the United States as a free and sovereign country. The new nation embraced the tradition of the First Thanksgiving, and the first Congress put before the new president a resolution that a day of national Thanksgiving be established.

The president was George Washington, not the deist the modern politically correct would have everyone believe but rather a member of the Episcopal Church, and he agreed with the resolution. In a proclamation, he said, in part, “Whereas 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 ...”

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate the actual foundation of our country.

It was, as he phrased it, just “Four score and seven years” after the founding of the country that the new nation Washington had been the first to preside over was divided by a bitter and bloody war. In the fall of 1863, although the Union army had taken Vicksburg and had defeated the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg only a few months earlier, the outcome of the Civil War was still in doubt. None the less, Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation.

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States,” he wrote in part, “... to set apart and observe ... a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate the re-establishment of an undivided Union that not only offered but threw open the gates of freedom and opportunity for all citizens.

It was November 1942, not quite 100 years after Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The nation was in the midst of another war, and the war was not going particularly well. In the Pacific, fighting still raged on Guadalcanal. In the European theater, the Allies were trying to gain a toe-hold in North Africa. But as bleak as the outlook may have been, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued his Thanksgiving proclamation.

“‘It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord,’” Roosevelt began, quoting an old hymn. “Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God.”

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate the victory over tyranny made possible by a country which grew from the very roots of the concepts and the culture of those who celebrated the First Thanksgiving.

We are celebrating Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday. It is a day on which millions will gather with family and friends to share the bounty of the country in which they live, a day when millions of others will take the time to share that bounty with strangers, with the less fortunate. It is a day on which we, as a nation, will continue to celebrate our blessings, the fact that we remain a free nation, the fact that we have our individual liberty. It is a day on which, even as we give thanks, we fail to appreciate the abundance in which we all share. It is a day on which we celebrate American exceptionalism, an exceptionalism that was founded in the days of the first Thanksgiving, when the country that was to eventually become the United States was created by a concept, not a political ideology, and a country which has been blessed by God, not by political correctness.

When we celebrate the Thanksgiving tradition, we celebrate the reality of American history, the reality of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage. The Thanksgiving tradition that began in 17th century Massachusetts, and which has been re-enacted in countless grade-school renditions dressed as Pilgrims and Indians, was not designed, as the politically correct would have it, to share with the Indians the bounty of the first harvest but rather to give the celebrants the opportunity to give thanks to their Creator.
Edward Winslow, a member of the original Plymouth colony that celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621, wrote, “... yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

The Pilgrims were Calvinists, followers of Protestant reformer John Calvin. And they were devout.

And they were devout. Proverbs 13:10 Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.
Proverbs 21:24 The proud and arrogant man-"Mocker" is his name; he behaves with overweening pride.
author has issues imo

happy thanksgiving alex

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