What Thanksgiving Means To Me

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love this time of year for many reasons:

• It is a uniquely American holiday. As I wrote in my post of 18 November, Thanksgiving has its roots in the first Thanksgiving celebration of the Pilgrims who came to America in 1620. They barely survived their first winter, and in the fall of 1621 they hosted a Thanksgiving feast to thank God for their successful and bountiful first harvest. The legend of that first Thanksgiving became a part of American lore and is remembered today, nearly four hundred years later.

• Speaking of the harvest, Thanksgiving is particularly meaningful for those of us who make our living from the land. Harvest is an incredibly demanding time--both exhausting and exhilarating. The walnut harvest begins sometime right after Labor Day in early September and does not end until sometime around the 10th of November. The days are long. We're usually working an average of 14-16 hours. And weekends disappear during that time of the year. We work to gather the crop in, we require huge demands on our bodies and minds to ensure that the logistics of getting the crop in before the fall rains come--or minimizing the damage when they do come--are well-planned and executed. Our employees are incredibly dedicated. Yes, they love the overtime pay--but everyone gets tired. And by the last week of October, we're all ready for harvest to be over so we can get our lives back. But when it is over--when the last load of walnuts is brought in from the orchards--there's a great sense of accomplishment and gratitude.

• And, speaking of gratitude, that's what Thanksgiving is for. It is a time to remember that the source of our strength and our provision comes not from our own hands, but from our Heavenly Father who graciously and faithfully brings us our crop each year. We are but stewards of what He has placed in our care. And if we care for the land and the trees, if we tend what He has created with passion and vigilance, if we treat our employees with dignity and honor and respect, and if we remember the source from which all of it comes, then God is faithful to bless us. And so Thanksgiving is a time of remembrance, of gratitude, of rest after the long harvest just completed.

• Thanksgiving is a time for the gathering of families. This year two of our three sons will be with us (the oldest lives in Costa Rica, making it a little difficult to get home for the holiday). We'll enjoy time together, probably watch a few football games, maybe go to a movie--and, most of all, just enjoy some time together as a family. We'll watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. And we'll bundle up against the chilly nights and the brisk days.

To all of my faithful readers of this blog, I offer my fondest greetings and wish you all a happy and warm Thanksgiving holiday.

"A Day Of Thanksgiving And Praise"

In October of 1863--in the months following the tenebrous summer of slaughter at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the disaster at Chickamauga--President Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving. As many of you know from earlier readings of previous posts on this blog, I am a great admirer of Mr. Lincoln. His proclamation is magnificently Lincolnesque: concise, eloquent, lyrical, even pastoral in its tone and simplistic elegance.

I had the pleasure of sharing it with my family last Thanksgiving as we gathered around our table to celebrate the holiday together, and now I wish to share it with you, my faithful readers (whoever and wherever you are):

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 unequalled 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; while that theatre 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 defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had 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 battle-field; 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 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, tranquillity and Union.

The First Thanksgiving

I'm currently reading a fascinating book entitled "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick. In it, Philbrick provides us with the story of the establishment of America's first successful European immigrant settlement. It's refreshing to read real history, as opposed to so much of the legend and myth that surrounds the founders of modern-day America.

The Pilgrims left England and settled temporarily in Holland to escape the religious persecution they were experiencing in their homeland under the rule of King James. But they increasingly felt stifled in Holland, for although they were free to worship as they pleased, they were still foreigners and were unable to find anything but the most menial of jobs to support their families. Their pastor was introduced to an investment group called The Adventurers who were willing to fund their emigration to the New World with the idea that they would ship back to England a half share of the riches they would undoubtedly find when they arrived on America's shores.

But the Pilgrims did not even arrive until November of 1620 at Provincetown Harbor. By the time they settled at Plymouth, winter had already set in and they hurriedly built a small village of 7 houses and four common buildings in which to live. The first winter was brutal. Of the 102 Pilgrims who arrived, only 50 survived to the spring of 1621. They forged an alliance with Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanoket tribe of Indians and they built a fast friendship with their interpreter, Squanto, who showed them how to plant native corn which was the critical crop which would allow them to survive the winters ahead.

Not all of the Pilgrims were religious. Some of the "Strangers", as the Puritans called them, came to start a new life, though they agreed to live under the governing rules established by the governor of the new settlement (first, John Carver and then--most famously--William Bradford).

Sometime in late September or early October 1621, a great feast was planned at the Plymouth settlement that included Massasoit and some ninety other Indians from the Pocanoket tribe. The feast lasted for three days and included fowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkins, squash, and wild turkey.

And contrary to revisionist historians who, sadly, misrepresent the real Thanksgiving in today's history textbooks, the 53 Pilgrims who celebrated that year did not hold the feast to thank the Indians. They thanked God. They took time to acknowledge the mighty provision and mercy of the Almighty, and they rightly attributed their safety and survival and establishment of their new settlement to God's protection.

Nearly 250 years later--in the middle of the crucible of the Civil War--President Lincoln memorialized that first Thanksgiving with an official holiday. More on that in my next post...