America the Beautiful Day 24: Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving really is a wonderful holiday.  While today we celebrate football and the first mad day of Christmas sales, it has  it’s history in offering thanks to God and has had bipartisan support.

President George Washington established the first day of Thanksgiving during his first Presidency.  He established the holiday in response to a call from Congress for it.  His first Thanksgiving Day proclamation says (in part):

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26^th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

Later, in modern times, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would establish the modern Thanksgiving holiday.  FDR would write in 1930:

Notwithstanding that our forefathers endured the hardships and privations of a primitive life, surrounded by dangers and solaced only with meager comforts, they nevertheless bequeathed to us a custom of devoting one day of every year to universal thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the blessing of life itself and the means to sustain it, for the sanctuary of home and the joys that pervade it, and for the mercies of His protection from accident, sickness, or death.

Both Presidents set this holiday as a day for us to take some time and thank God for the gifts he has bestowed on us.  I am very thankful for the health and safety of my family, and for our ability to celebrate today with loved ones.  I feel blessed for the wife and kids He has seen fit to give me.

I hope you and yours have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving day today.