Thanksgiving is pre-political. It’s pre-republican. It’s pre-democratic. It predates independence and the Constitution.
It is not, however, pre-American.
There are documented cases in the New World of colonists, settlers, and conquistadors of various European nations designating religious observations intended to celebrate the harvest and acknowledge Who exactly provided for it. In England, special days for giving thanks were established after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot.
But it was Americans, specifically, who took a generalized desire, and duty, for gratitude and established a new annual holiday, intended from its very origin to give thanks to Almighty God for His acts of kindness and benevolence to our people.
There is some dispute regarding whether the first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in Plymouth Colony by the Puritan Pilgrims in 1621 or whether English settlers arriving in Virginia in 1619 were first. The Virginians’ charter declared that “the day of our ships arrival . . . shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving.”
What we know for certain is that the practice had become established among the English colonists in America a hundred years before independence.
It was therefore very natural that in the crucible of the Revolution, American leaders would call on the people to offer their prayers, their supplications, and their gratitude to God. As the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, Samuel Adams drafted a proclamation, adopted by the Continental Congress, asking the people to “acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of.” After war’s end and independence gained, in October 1789, President George Washington declared “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
And it was Abraham Lincoln, after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, with the nation adrift in a sea of blood, who began the practice of proclaiming an annual, and national, Thanksgiving Day.
As America approaches its 250th year of independence, despite all our imperfections, there is much for our people to be grateful for: Safety and security on a continent bounded by two oceans and two relatively benign neighbors. A Constitution that has served us well, year after year. Material prosperity and abundance unimaginable in the Old World or in former times. The freedoms of religion, of speech, and of conscience.
“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” read Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863. “They are the gracious gifts of the Highest God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”
For those mercies, and for our beloved country, we too give thanks.