Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers.  I have “dutifully” participated in the culinary festivities and have also indulged in one of my favorite traditional pastimes—a nap after dinner—but I haven’t forgotten to do what the goal of this national holiday intended, to give thanks.  But what does that mean?  It might seem obvious.  But in a society that is pretty secularized, the meaning can be easily lost, just as easily as its history.

Though schools and other institutions, as well as politically correct advocates, try to tell us that the first Thanksgiving was really just about the Pilgrims thanking the Native Americans for all their help, or some other explanation, in reality, its history is quite straightforward.  Days of thanksgiving were already common in Protestant countries of the sixteenth century, particularly England, Scotland and Holland.  These days often included an exhortation to confess individual and national sins, and of course to humbly ask for God’s continued blessings.  The practice was simply carried forward by the settlers of New England, most of whom early on had come from Puritan or closely related stock.  And so, that first Thanksgiving, following a good deal of hardship, took place in New England for that very same reason.  The purpose was explicitly to give “humble and hearty” thanks to God for what He had done and to beseech Him for continued, albeit undeserved, blessings of grace.

We do know that the holiday wasn’t declared a formal national holiday until much later, but for anyone who wishes to read the declaration of President Abraham Lincoln setting aside the day as a time for thanksgiving, in the midst of even greater hardship in 1863, he or she will see that the purpose had not changed at all.  And so it ought to remain.

I personally want to give thanks to Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for His innumerable acts of grace to me, to my family, to many friends and relatives and to the nation in which I am privileged to reside.  The thanks deservedly goes to Him who created the universe and all that is in it, and who redeemed His children through His Son Jesus Christ.  We owe Him unending thanks and praise.