Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln  established the annual celebration of Thanksgiving in the midst of the Civil War. 1863. These are his words in establishing this national celebration.

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . 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.”

Abraham Lincoln

This week, in honor of the holiday we celebrate, I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

This entry was posted on 26. November 2008 at 14:26 and is filed under Principles, Human Life Value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.