Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving is a day and season for me as, I believe, the Passover and accompanying meal and season is for those of the Jewish faith. It was, likewise, for three of our first four presidents of the United States (Washington, Adams, not Jefferson, but Madison).  Over forty years later Abraham Lincoln revived the earlier precedent and again gave presidential acknowledgement as did most or all presidents since his time. 

Below are two presidential proclamations, by Washington and Lincoln, that resonate deeply with my convictions.  I would hope readers might share them with their guests or in the homes in which they celebrate their Thanksgiving meal this year. 

President George Washington issued a national Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789. He wrote, 

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th 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...for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed...and also that 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—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually...To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best."

  

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November a "prayerful day of Thanksgiving."
President Lincoln said this: 

"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, tranquility and Union." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VI, "Proclamation of Thanksgiving" (October 3, 1863), p. 497.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939  (approved by Congress in 1941).