True meaning of Thanksgiving

Hello Everyone,
With Thanksgiving being this week I wanted to get into the real meaning behind Thanksgiving and the reason why it is celebrated. Is it a holiday about football? Is it a holiday about sales? Is it a holiday about eating or turkeys?

Here is the definition from Wikipedia:
Thanksgiving was a holiday to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to God, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships. Traditionally, it has been a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. This holiday has since moved away from its religious roots. My question would be why did it move from its religious roots. Did God quit blessing us? Or did we forget that it was God who blessed us?

In America President Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War on the 3rd day of October 1863 proclaimed that the last Thursday in November would be celebrated as Thanksgiving day.


Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

The year that is drawing toward 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 can not 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 ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our 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 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 imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, 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 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln


During this holiday week remember why we celebrate Thanksgiving. As you are with family, or working, or shopping at all the sales share the true meaning of Thanksgiving with the people around you. And don't forget to give praise and Thanksgiving to the one who it is owed, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Have a blessed week!
Billy

Psalms 100:4 Enter into his gates with Thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

Colossians 4:1-2 Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with Thanksgiving;

2 Corinthians 9:11-12 Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us Thanksgiving to God.
For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many Thanksgivings unto God;