Menu
Opinion
"Thanksgiving: A Day to Remember"
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Traditionally, the fourth Thursday of November is celebrated as a day of national Thanksgiving. For most folks, it is a holiday that centers around a large family gathering and dinner. It is also a day of remembering distant family members who cannot be at home or who are now remembered as part of one's family history.
Thanksgiving is normally associated with our 17th Century colonial history that includes the pilgrims; Plymouth, Mass., friendly Indians, and a happy shared dinner, feast or meal. How much of this is true remains open to question. The pilgrims were thankful to be alive. They had survived a perilous journey across the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny vessel and a few months of bare existence, and they had received friendship and some food from some friendly Indians. By today's definition, the first Thanksgiving was not much of a holiday as we celebrate it today.
| It wasn't until our Civil War in 1863 that the last Thursday (normally the fourth Thursday) of November was declared by the following presidential proclamation to be a national day of "Thanksgiving." | |
| "By the President of the United States: a Proclamation: | In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected & obeyed & harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies & navies of the Union….. |
…I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States & those who are at sea & those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart & observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving & praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
| Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States" | Many of the words used by President Lincoln in his proclamation of "Thanksgiving" are appropriate and applicable today as they were then. Especially, "those who are sojourning in foreign lands" for we have civilians and military personnel in the U.S. Army, Naavy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Air Force, who are stationed throughout the world defending the opportunity for those of us at home to enjoy the 387th Anniversary of the first Thanksgiving and the 144th anniversary of President Lincoln's Proclamation! Therefore, for both of these anniversaries, our armed forces veterans and those currently serving on active duty both here in the United States and "sojourning in foreign lands," we should be always and forever thankful! |