Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9412070037
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A30 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy ... '' etc. etc.
Well, politically correct for its time, we are sure, within the context of Pilgrim culture. As the wit Finley Peter Dunne put it in a pre-P.C. era: Thanksgiving "twas founded by th' Puritans to give thanks f'r bein' presarved fr'm th' Indyans, and ... we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr'm th' Puritans."
An annual, national day of Thanksgiving wasn't proclaimed till long after the Puritans, by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. He had declared two Thanksgivings that grim year, in the midst of the Civil War, one in August and one in November. The global computer network, Internet, would not cough up Lincoln's proclamation of October, which set the observance for the last Thursday of November each year. But it did deliver the proclamation of Thanksgiving he had made that July:
" ... I invite the People of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and in the forms approved by their own consciences, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty, for the wonderful things he has done in the Nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger, which has produced, and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of the insurgents ... ."
Presidents will put their own spin on these things.
For his part, President Clinton, in his Proclamation of Thanksgiving Day 1994, calls on the nation to pursue social justice: " ... It is our great fortune to live in a country of abundance and promise - a land of freedom for all. Still only a few generations removed from our Nation's founders, we continue to blaze a trail toward stability and justice. Aspiring to lift ourselves closer to God's grace, we remain determined to ease the pain of the many people who know only poverty and despair. Clearly, ours is an unfinished journey. ..."
Clinton has learned, like others before him, that presidents don't always get their way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt twice proclaimed Thanksgiving as the third Thursday in November to give merchants a longer Christmas shopping season, a deviance from tradition that so upset the public that Congress took the matter in hand and, by joint resolution, officially set the date as the fourth Thursday.
Now, 131 years after Lincoln's proclamation, that tradition is well-established. Today, we give thanks to our readers, and hope you and your families enjoy a happy Thanksgiving. Gratitude being one of the greatest sentiments, let us also cite a few other of its expressions:
\ Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
-Psalm 100\ Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of Harvest-home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
-Henry Alford\ A Thanksgiving|
Lord, for the erring thought
not into evil wrought:
Lord, for the wicked will
Betrayed and baffled still:
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
-William Dean Howells\ "Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."-Mark Twain|
by CNB