A BOUNTIFUL
THANKSGIVING Forget Saddam or a financial crisis in the Asian financial markets. The headline in America this week, and especially in the Midwest, is about the record-setting birth of septuplets in Des Moines, Iowa. The McCaughey’s gave new meaning and validity to the motto, "Iowa, a place to grow." I already knew the validity of this slogan, being the father of twin boys whose mother grew up in Iowa. Despite attempts of the national media to stir controversy over this amazing event with talk of fetal reduction, the reaction of the family and Iowa and Midwest citizens reminds us of the truly important things in life. Family, strong communities, and the divine miracle of life are plenty to remind us of why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We are all familiar with the historical origin of Thanksgiving. The pilgrims came to America seeking religious freedom. They arrived in this new wilderness in the fall of the year, and many of them died of sickness and starvation the first winter. With the help of the Indian, Squanto, they learned how to survive in America. They had a good harvest the next fall (1621) and gave thanks to God by having a meal that lasted three days. From their arrival in 1620 until the spring of 1623, the pilgrims had lived a communal lifestyle where there was no private ownership. The governor, William Bradford, decided that they would be more successful if people were given their own land. This led to a bountiful harvest and was the foundation of the future prosperity that America has experienced because of the individual freedom that comes from the right to own property and a free marketplace. The Pilgrims didn’t keep up the tradition of thanksgiving. In 1676, there was a declaration of a day of thanksgiving to God. The 13 colonies celebrated the first national day of thanksgiving in 1777, after the American victory in the battle of Saratoga. As President, George Washington tried to get an annual day of thanksgiving, but failed in his attempt. The national holiday that we celebrate today was made official on October 3, 1863 by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War. The person responsible for Thanksgiving becoming a reality was a woman by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale was a writer and magazine editor who had fought for forty years to make Thanksgiving a holiday before Lincoln made it a reality. I will end here and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. I recommend you read further, if you want to be inspired about the true meaning of Thanksgiving as proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. Official Thanksgiving proclamation 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. We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. A. Lincoln
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