Giving thanks
The all-American holiday
“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High.”
—Psalm 92:1
Is this year of our American discontent really the right time to give thanks for blessings? Especially this month, with winter staring us down— with a death glare—and all of officialdom, make that most of officialdom, begging us to stay away from each other.
The term “social distance” is now a verb, more’s the pity. Isn’t it time to hunker down and give thanks in, say, the spring? When we can do so sincerely? Why on Thursday, when another 2,000 Arkansans might come down with the coronavirus? Why this week, when thousands more will die from covid-19? National Guard units have been called up in other states to handle mortuary duties. What gives?
Perhaps we should start by allowing that this country has faced obstacles before—deadly obstacles. The country celebrated Thanksgiving in November 2001, while the towers were still smoldering. And if some families, many families, didn’t exactly celebrate, at least they recognized. We imagine there were turkey sandwiches in the White House and the Pentagon that November as the country prepared for war.
Talk about a year of American discontent, could one be more discontented than 1968? The year of riots and assassinations and a president refusing to run again and Vietnam and so much to dislike about where the country was going. Still, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving 1929 happened barely a month after the stock market crash in late October. A few years before, many people in these latitudes were still drying off after the Flood of ‘27, but managed to give thanks to Providence just the same. In 1942, FDR didn’t wait for better news from the front before issuing his Thanksgiving proclamation that year.
Speaking of wartime presidents, below you will find a reprint of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of 1863. Discontent? Discontent would have been preferable to total war. At least we Americans are only divided politically this year, instead of at each other’s throats, literally. With bayonets affixed. That was the case in 1863. Yet Lincoln asked for the day of thanks anyway.
Sure, it came after Gettysburg, a Union victory. But the war was far from over. Fact is, by October 1863, when Lincoln issued his call, Gettysburg had only stopped a losing streak for the United States. Chancellorsville was fought in May. Chickamauga in September. The rebels had cleared the Shenandoah Valley that summer. New York City suffered through draft riots. But after the bloodiest battle of the war, the president asked the nation to pause, and to give thanks.
Lincoln’s was a bold decision. We can only imagine what the press in the South made of the proclamation at the time. (We don’t really want to know.) Still, the man had enough self-study in the Illinois wilderness in his early years to issue a fine statement.
There are some who say that Mr. Seward wrote that year’s proclamation instead, but there are enough biblical references that we think President Lincoln might have edited it heavily. At some points in his life, the only book in his home might have been the King James Bible. His speeches and writings reflect it.
On Thursday, there will be empty seats at tables across America. There will be those missing as they serve overseas. Or missing because the pandemic keeps them from traveling. Or just missing.
Still, Americans will give thanks on this most American of holidays. As always, Abraham Lincoln gives us the example to emulate.
A 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 theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plow, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
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.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: AbrahamLincoln