By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… The event Americans celebrate on the fourth Thursday in November traditionally brings to mind the Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims with the Native Americans at Plymouth in 1621. In the midst of hardships, the Pilgrims stopped to give thanks to God.
On a quest for religious freedom, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. The first winter was devastating. By the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower.
However, the harvest of 1621 had been a bountiful one and the colonists decided to celebrate with a thanksgiving feast in honor of their God.
It wasn’t until June of 1676 that another day of thanksgiving was recorded. On June 20 of that year, the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks to God for the good fortune their community was enjoying. Edward Rawson, the town clerk, proclaimed June 29 as a day to give thanks to God.
A hundred years later, in October of 1777, all 13 colonies joined in a day to thank God for their victory over the British at Saratoga.
When George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, some opposed it. Many Americans felt the hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. Thomas Jefferson was among those who opposed the idea of having a day of thanksgiving. Could this be the foundation of the ACLU?
Sarah Hale, a magazine editor, led the fight for what we recognize as Thanksgiving Day. Hale wrote many editorials championing her cause in her Boston Ladies’ Magazine, and later, in Godey’s Lady’s Book. After a 40-year campaign of writing editorials and letters to governors and presidents, Hale’s obsession became a reality in 1863. President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving. Many southern states refused to celebrate what they considered a Yankee holiday.
From that time on, a day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed by every American President.
The date was changed a number of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who moved it back one week to the next-to-last Thursday in November. He hoped to stimulate the economy by creating a longer Christmas shopping season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date. Not that it much matters today. Christmas shows and ads began weeks ago.
In 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.
This outlines where we get the idea for a day of thanksgiving, but where did the people of Plymouth get the idea for a Thanksgiving celebration? Secular historians cite several earlier traditions leading to a day of thanksgiving. They suggest the influence of the Old English holiday of Harvest Home, in which the villagers joined to gather at the conclusion of the harvest to celebrate their good fortune, a pagan custom that predated Christianity. This is a tradition that would most likely have been rejected by the Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims even refused to celebrate Christmas because it had become a secular holiday by the 1600’s.
The Pilgrim’s thanksgiving was most likely a response to God’s instruction summed up in 1Thessalonians 5:18:
In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
This is merely one of the nearly one hundred references to thanks and thanksgiving found throughout the Bible. Pilgrims recognized such a day was called for in Old Testament times as the annual Feast of the Tabernacles (the Feast of the ingathering). On this feast day, “all that were born in Israel and all the inhabitants, including the poor and strangers” were to share in the feast. More specifically, this holiday was the outgrowth of individual Pilgrim congregations declaring days of prayers thanking God.
Eons ago when I was a child, there was a much greater religious emphasis on this holiday. It was a time when people still gave thanks to God for their well-being.
For the Moses family, Thanksgiving Day was started with a trip to Westminster Presbyterian Church where the family deposited a box of can goods for those less fortunate. There was singing of traditional hymns of thanksgiving and the pastor delivered a message of thanksgiving. We then returned home to a turkey dinner that had been cooking all morning.
We gathered around the table where a prayer of thanksgiving was delivered and my father then spoke of how the Lord had been good to the family over the last year. He then carved and served the turkey, potatoes, dressing, (which I did not like but could eat if I got enough gravy on it), cranberry sauce (which I like about the same as I like pomegranates), green beans and corn (which had been canned from the summer garden) and, of course, pumpkin pie.
Thanksgiving Day was like a Sunday on steroids.
It was a time when people believed hard work and God would supply their needs instead of The Great Society and government welfare. God was the center of thanksgiving, not the turkey on the table.
I am aware that any American centering his thanksgiving on a beneficent God rankles the soles of the atheist and the ACLU; however, I believe it is fitting that God’s people stop and take a day of thanksgiving for all that the Lord has done for them.
It sends ACLU into apoplexy that the American government has declared a day of thanksgiving, which is based in the belief of the God that has blessed this nation.
If that bothers you, you can take the day and worship the gods of football, or rocks, or whatever.But as for my family and me, we will thank God.
If you don’t believe your good fortune is due to a loving God, so be it. Hey, you can even begin your Christmas shopping early. However, if you don’t believe in God and His Son, I am not sure why you are shopping for Christmas.
Thought of the week… It must be an odd feeling to be thankful to nobody in particular…to be thankful ‘in general.’ It’s very strange. It’s a little like being married in general.
– Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
