Weekly Word: Thanksgiving

 Weekly Word...

Thanksgiving 

    The Pilgrims were not the first people to have a thanksgiving celebration. Wampanoag Indians marked 6 thanksgiving festivals per year.

The first Christian thanksgiving was held in Texas on May 23rd, 1541 when Spanish Explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado found food, water, and pasture in the Panhandle.

August 9th, 1607 English settlers led by Capt. George Popham joined Abnaki Indians in Maine for a feast and prayer meeting.

December 4th, 1619 a group of 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia. The group’s leader Capt. John Woodleaf declared a day of thanksgiving

      1620 marked the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock’s first winter. 1-3 people died every day in that first year until only 46 of the 102 that

landed remained. Squanto, an English-speaking member of the Wampanoag nation intervened by teaching the settlers everything he knew about survival. As a result, 1621 yielded the biggest harvest anyone had ever seen. The first thanksgiving of Native Americans and settlers was held to celebrate the “goodness of God” and to “after a special manner rejoice together.”

      This feast was not repeated yearly and it was not until December 18, 1777, that all of the then 13 colonies celebrated thanksgiving

together. October 3rd, 1863 marked the declaration of Thanksgiving Day as the 3rd Thursday in November by President Lincoln.

         In President Lincoln’s words of 1883. Let us truly :

“…Set apart and observe the last Thursday of November…as a day of

thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the

Heavens. And I recommend…that while offering up ascriptions justly due

to Him…they do also humble penitence for our national perverseness and

disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become

widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in this lamentable (war) in

which we are …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 his Divine purposes to the full

enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.”

Thanksgiving is not about the turkey or the feast; it’s always was, and always will be about God. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!