THANKSGIVING
Throughout the United States and Canada, Thanksgiving Day is an annual legal holiday. It is one of the oldest and most widespread of celebrations. This American holiday commemorates the harvest celebration held by the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Society in 1621. The Pilgrims had come ashore from the Mayflower on Dec. 21, 1620. During the first hard winter, only about half of the original group had survived. Despite such heartbreaking losses, the harvest was very bountiful. The Indians had supplied them with corn seeds and there was corn in abundance as well as barley and plenty of meat, fish, and fowl.
The pilgrims set aside a day of thanksgiving to God for this wonderful harvest. They invited their Indian friends and ninety Indians and their chief, Massasoit, responded to the invitation. They brought five deer to the feast and celebrated with the Pilgrims as they gave thanks to God. The pilgrims often set aside days of thanksgiving whenever they wished to praise and thank God for His blessings and help but this harvest day feast soon became an annual day of thanksgiving. The actual dates varied according to the end of the harvest season but it was soon an established annual event.
Although Thanksgiving was widely celebrated as an annual celebration during the following years, it did not become a national holiday until Oct, 3, 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday. This was during the great Civil War when our nation's very foundations were being shaken. All seemed dark and bleak to President Lincoln but he realized more than ever the need to be thankful. How fitting it is that we should give thanks to God during the time of battle as well as in the time of victory.
To the Christian, every day is "thanksgiving." If we waited until our designated holiday to praise God for His blessings, we would consider ourselves most ungrateful. However, we are glad for the true celebration of Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday. It reminds us all of our nations humble beginning and how God has blessed and preserved our land. We must never take this for granted or feel that somehow by our own strength or merit we have made America the greatest nation on the face of the earth. If God had not been our Helper, then our history as a nation would have been quite different. It is God who has blessed, God who has prospered, and God who has kept us to this present hour.
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