While on errands today, I
overheard shopkeepers telling customers happy holidays. One young woman who
handled my purchase wished me Happy Thanksgiving. I was surprised and asked her
why Happy Thanksgiving instead of happy holidays. Her answer disappointed me
but it was not unexpected – we live in Washington, D.C. where the state-sanctioned
religion is atheism.
Everyone displays their tolerance
towards other faiths with COEXIST bumper stickers, but when it comes to Christianity,
they make strong exceptions. She told me in a very confident voice that
Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday and thus she would not be offending
anyone with her wishes. It is just another holiday that everyone celebrates. I
did not have the patience to tell her how wrong and ignorant she was.
According to Stanley Yavneh
Klos, the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation Presidents
issued National Thanksgiving Day Proclamations in 1776, 1777, 1779, 1780, 1781,
and 1782. The first presidential proclamation was issued by John Hancock as
President of the United Colonies Continental Congress on March 16, 1776. (Historic.us)
President George
Washington, the first president of the United States under the Constitution of
1787 released his proclamation on October 3, 1789 in New York City. Both Houses of Congress requested the
President to “recommend to the People of the United States a day of public
thanks-giving and prayer, formally declared November 26 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.”
Praising the “civil and
religious liberty with which we are blessed,” President George Washington
assigned Thursday, the 26th day of November, as a day in which “we
may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the
great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and
other transgressions.”
President George
Washington wished that through our prayers God would “enable us all,… to render
our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a
Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully
executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations
(especially such as have shown kindness to us), and bless them with good
governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true
religion and virtue…” (www.heritage.org/initiatives/first.../washingtons-thanksgiving-proclamation)
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th
President (1861-1865) issued Proclamation 106 – Thanksgiving Day, 1863 on
October 3, 1863. It begins:
“The year that is drawing toward 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 can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is
habitually insensible to the every-watching providence of the Almighty God.”
President Lincoln
described the wealth, the strength, the bounty, the population increase in
spite of the civil war losses, the plows that have enlarged the borders and the
settlements, have grown the crops, the “large
increase in freedom,” the mines of coal, iron, and precious metals that have enlarged
their abundant production. “The laws have been respected and obeyed; harmony
has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while
that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of
the Union.”
President Lincoln, a man
of God, recognized that “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.”
In the last paragraph,
President Lincoln pronounced that the American people should “solemnly,
reverently, and gratefully acknowledge, as with one heart and one voice,” these
“gracious gifts of the Most High God.”
“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.”
Americans, he said, should
not just be thankful for their blessings, but also humbly penitent for “our
national perverseness and disobedience.” Widows, orphans, mourners, and
sufferers should be commended to God’s tender care, he said. …” In the lamentable civil strife in which we
are unavoidably engaged, … 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,
tranquility, and union.” (The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69900)
The Thanksgiving holiday
that we continue to celebrate today was established by President Abraham
Lincoln during the Civil War and was made law by Congress in 1941. It was rooted
in religion and God. The fact that Americans, particularly young Americans, do
not know our country’s history, is a sad reflection on our “progressive”
education system that teaches revisionist history or none at all.
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