Even with turmoil, many reasons to give thanks

There are some who would say we don’t have much to give thanks for this Thanksgiving season. These naysayers couldn’t be more wrong. Though it wasn’t an “official holiday” deemed so by any government when the Plymouth colonists sat down with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621 for the first Thanksgiving; it was also a time of great stress.

A year earlier these settlers sailed for a new world where they would be free to practice their religion. It took more than two months for the 102 passengers aboard a rather small ship called the Mayflower to go from Plymouth, England to Cape Cod. First of all, they landed in the wrong place. Their destination was intended to be at the mouth of the Hudson River, more than 200 miles south.

Their first winter in their new home was brutal and most of the new colonists stayed on board the Mayflower. Half died before spring. But they were in luck, an Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe, Squanto, who could speak English because of his kidnapping and sale into slavery and later escape, taught the Pilgrims how to farm, fish and hunt. This eventually led to a grand feast that lasted for three days.

In 1863, this nation was embroiled in a conflict against itself. It was in the crucible of the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November to be a day of Thanksgiving. When Lincoln signed the proclamation into law Oct. 3, 1863, battles that year in Chancellorsville, Virginia; Vicksburg, Mississippi; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; had cost the nation in dead and wounded on both sides more than 112,000 men.

Lincoln wrote in his proclamation: “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict ...

“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

“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.”

So as we look today, look at the total picture. We are not at war with ourselves. We enjoy a unparallelled standard of living and while we have our issues, we can pause and recognize, as President Lincoln said, “the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

This story was originally published November 23, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Even with turmoil, many reasons to give thanks."