It's Thanksgiving

I received an email from t-shirts.com telling me there is a 10% off “turkey day” sale. I see that term from time to time, now more and more. I want to scream “It’s not Turkey Day, it’s Thanksgiving! It’s about giving THANKS not about turkeys!!”

Ok, I’ve got that out of my system.

Look up Thanksgiving on Wikipedia and you’ll find “Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday to give thanks at the conclusion of the harvest season. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November”.

Hmm, “to give thanks at the conclusion of the harvest season.” Ok I suppose. But here in America there is no harvest season for us to be really thankful for. We live in a perpetual harvest season. So it’s not really that special, is it?

If you want a real laugh go to www.happyturkeyday.org - “This Thanksgiving, when you sit down at the dinner table, please take a full 5 minutes of silence and/or prayer to acknowledge the millions of lives that were ended for this Day of Thankfulness.”

The lives their talking about are the turkeys (oi vai!), but at least happyturkeyday.org and Wikipedia acknowledge this is a day of thankfulness.

Today I want you to not only think about what you are thankful for, but to whom you are thankful to. Or should I have written, to Whom.

Yes, once again time and “progressive” thinking have separated us from the original intent of the holiday (Christmas is currently under this same attack). The folks at happyturkeyday.org want you take 5 minutes for silence and/or prayer and contemplate the fate of the turkey. I would like to ask you to take 5 minutes and read the two presidential proclamations that brought about Thanksgiving Day in America.

The first was written by President George Washington in 1789 which set aside one day that year as a day of Thanksgiving. The second written by Abraham Lincoln in Oct. 1863 proclaimed the day as an annual holiday. By the way, when reading the Lincoln proclamation, remember this is 1863 at the height of the civil war.

There is no doubt that this day of Thanksgiving was intended to be a day of thanksgiving and praise to God Almighty. May we all not only contemplate that, but share it as well.

Oh, one other thing about the Lincoln proclamation; please take notice of the second sentence. It is a thousand times better than any sentence I could ever write if I had all the time in the world to think and reflect on what I wanted to say. Lincoln probably scribbled it out as if it were no big deal.


Washington's Prolamation

Lincoln's Prolamation