Thanksgiving almost always brings memories of family dinner traditions: golden roasted turkey sliced into white meat and dark meat, turkey dressing, creamy white mashed potatoes, sweet yams smothered in brown sugar and marshmallows, a green salad, corn or green beans, sparkling cranberries, and of course, pie for dessert: pumpkin, cherry, apple, mince, or berry—piled high with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. It is truly a decadent feast most of us devour!
I enjoyed such a feast this year with one of my sisters and her family. It was a lovely day, and although the culinary delights were indeed tasty, the most important thing to me about Thanksgiving Day is just that—thanks giving.
It’s a day to gather with family, friends, and loved ones to rejoice in each others’ company and bask in thoughts of the bounty the Lord has blessed us with for yet another year. Although football games, Macey’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and anticipating Christmas sales often seem to overwhelm thoughts of God’s goodness and mercy to us, there is still a warm goodness that pervades our homes as we gather to share a meal together. (See photo gallery)
The day was, from its beginnings in the time of the Pilgrims, set aside to remember the goodness of God and acknowledge His hand in our lives. On the website Christian Answers I found the following interesting bit of information about the history of the holiday:
“Much of the credit for the adoption of a later ANNUAL national Thanksgiving Day may be attributed to Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. For thirty years, she promoted the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day, contacting President after President until President Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of November as a national Day of Thanksgiving. Over the next seventy-five years, Presidents followed Lincoln’s precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day. Then, in 1941, Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday of each November as a national holiday.”
In his 1863, declaration setting aside the last Thursday in November as a day of national thanks giving, Abraham Lincoln expressed the following sentiments:
“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.”
It is quite amazing to me how well these expressions fit our present national situation as much as, or maybe more so, than they did in Lincoln’s day.
In a recent sacrament meeting the speakers who shared their thoughts on gratitude brought inspired me with these thoughts: The more we express our gratitude to the Lord in all things, the better we are able to know what it is we really need to ask Him for. Expressions of gratitude help us humble ourselves, acknowledge what He is already doing for us, and help us see that even in the darkest abyss there is a blessing.
So as I reflect on the recent brief moment of thanks we paused to give on the official national day of thanks, it is with a hope that more often our hearts will be filled daily with gratitude for the tender mercies of the Lord in each of our lives.