There is a podcast of a radio program The Ramsey Show, that I enjoy listening to on my way to work. I was listening to this program the morning after Thanksgiving Day, when the host told a story that I had never heard, reading a historical document that I really needed to hear.
I was lead to believe that Thanksgiving Day was started by the pilgrims, the people and congregation that made up the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony.
I enjoy history because it helps me to understand why things are the way that they are. I have done some extensive reading on the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony and had read that they did have a feast, on a certain spring day, with some local Indians that had befriended them. However, this does not account for the Thanksgiving Day feast that I came to understand from my childhood.
I had come to understand Thanksgiving Day as a family feast, a holiday for extended family members together. In the past few years, our family has lost members, the remaining members dysfunctional. If you would have asked me as a young man, I would have told you that I love Thanksgiving and Christmas Days, but I confess that I have come to loathe these days. I know, to even admit it, puts me on shaky ground as a citizen and at risk of expulsion by Hallmark.
This past Thanksgiving Day lived up to a high degree of dysfunction. I sat quietly, biding the time, desiring to depart with my wife. At these family gatherings I feel as though I have been locked in a mental institution and all of the orderlies took the day off. I exaggerate, to paint a picture; however, the exaggeration is only slight from reality.
The American Thanksgiving Holiday
For fifteen years, the editor of a woman’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book petitioned every sitting president to establish a national thanksgiving day. You probably know of Sarah Josepha Hale, not from history, or her magazine, but from a children’s nursery rhyme; she is the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb. On October 3, 1789, George Washington did proclaim a day of Thanksgiving but it was only observed in New England and other northern states and at differing times. Abraham Lincoln agreed with Mrs. Hale; therefore, he instructed the Secretary of State William H. Seward to draft a proclamation, signed and sealed by the President of the United States of America on October 3, 1863.
Proclamation of Thanksgiving [1]
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled 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 and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 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. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they 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 next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
[L.S.]
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
