Thanksgiving is certainly different here in the year we won’t ever forget.
The pandemic has changed a lot of things in an unprecedented way, and this annual holiday is one of them. But while travel plans and dinner plans have changed, the essence of this uniquely American holiday has not.
Thanksgiving Day was inspired by the Pilgrims who came to this land for reasons that included religious freedom.
It was in 1621 when that first definitely informal Thanksgiving took place with the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Native Americans who had lived in this land for thousands of years.
But it wasn’t until 200 years later, in 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln declared it a federal holiday to express thanks for the country and for God’s hand on the nation. And remember, Lincoln did that at a time when our country was going through its worst crisis, still to this day, the Civil War, that split us and cost us 620-thousand lives, many more than the number of deaths during this pandemic.
But President Lincoln saw the benefit of focusing on what the country had and what its citizens were blessed with…and not the troubles of his day. President Lincoln called it his Proclamation of Thanksgiving and Praise and he called on all Americans on that one Thursday every November, to say thanks for their blessings.
We all have blessings to be thankful for, even during what we are going through right now. So let’s count our blessings and we can make this different kind of Thanksgiving, still a very thankful one.
(Photo Getty Images)