I have read on Facebook that many people think that we are now in the greatest three months of the year: the "-ber" months (October, November and December). I agree because the temperatures have cooled off and each of the three -ber months have a celebration that I look forward to decorating for and celebrating. We have just had the first of the three, Halloween. Next in line is Thanksgiving. Now, there are caricatures of turkeys and pumpkins everywhere! Families and friends come together, eat turkey and pumpkin pie, and say what they are thankful for, and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and football.
I have always believed that Thanksgiving was all about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people celebrating the harvest of the Pilgrim’s first attempt of living in the New World. I thought that that was all there was to it, but that is just the start of the journey of the Thanksgiving holiday.
At History.com, I read a bit about Thanksgiving. George Washington announced the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government for Americans to express gratitude for the end of the war for independence and the ratification of the United States Constitution. This day of Thanksgiving did not catch on. Many years later a noted female author, Sarah Josepha Hale, persuaded Abraham Lincoln to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. President Lincoln asked all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He put the holiday on the calendar to be the fourth Thursday in November. Other than a brief moment in time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to change the date to the third Thursday to help merchants sell more goods for the Christmas season (hmmm…that sound familiar). His plan to change the date was defeated and in 1941 President Roosevelt signed a bill to make Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November.
Although the date for Thanksgiving changes and our reasons to be thankful change, the one thing that doesn't change is that we give thanks to God for taking care of us. This takes me back to my October blog scripture, Psalm 136 "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever."
-- Tina
Editors, History com. “Thanksgiving 2022.” HISTORY. Accessed October 21, 2022. https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving.