Happy Thanksgiving
Presidential proclamations offer thoughts on gratitude, prosperity, fortune and faith
To mark the Thanksgiving holiday, the Editorial Board offers excerpts from presidential Thanksgiving proclamations with our best wishes for everyone in Hampton Roads to enjoy this day with family and friends. We’re thankful for your readership and support.
“[W]e may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; ... to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.” — George Washington, 1789.
“I recommend to [my fellow citizens] that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also
... 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 ... to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
“Let us, therefore, as a people set our faces resolutely against evil, and with broad charity, with kindliness and goodwill toward all men, but with unflinching determination to smite down wrong, strive with all the strength that is given us for righteousness in public and in private life.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1908.
“Ours has been a favored nation in the bounty which God has bestowed upon it. The great trial of humanity, though indeed we bore our part as well as we were able, left us comparatively little scarred. It is for us to recognize that we have been thus favored, and when we gather at our altars to offer up thanks, we will do well to pledge, in humility and all sincerity, our purpose to prove deserving.” — Warren G. Harding, 1921.
“May we recall the courage of those who settled a wilderness, the vision of those who founded the Nation, the steadfastness of those who in every succeeding generation have fought to keep pure the ideal of equality of opportunity and hold clear the goal of mutual help in time of prosperity as in time of adversity. … May we be grateful for the passing of dark days; for the new spirit of dependence one on another; for the closer unity of all parts of our wide land; for the greater friendship between employers and those who toil ...” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933.
“[W]e have, as in the past, ample reason to be thankful for the abundance of our blessings. We are grateful for the blessings of faith and health and strength and for the imperishable spiritual gifts of love and hope. We give thanks, too, for our freedom as a nation; for the strength of our arms and the faith of our friends; for the beliefs and confidence we share; for our determination to stand firmly for what we believe to be right and to resist mightily what we believe to be base; and for the heritage of liberty bequeathed by our ancestors which we are privileged to preserve for our children and our children’s children.” — John F. Kennedy, 1961.
“Above all other nations of the world, America has been especially blessed and should give special thanks. We have bountiful harvests, abundant freedoms, and a strong, compassionate people. … Today we have more to be thankful for than our pilgrim mothers and fathers who huddled on the edge of the New World that first Thanksgiving Day could ever dream. We should be grateful not only for our blessings, but for the courage and strength of our ancestors which enable us to enjoy the lives we do today.” — Ronald Reagan, 1982.