GIVING THANKS ON THANKSGIVING DAY

NOVEMBER 17, 2007

In today’s highly secularized culture, it’s easy to forget the religious origins of some of our holidays. Thanksgiving Day is one of them. Those who first set aside a day for thanksgiving in our nation’s history had religious reasons for doing so. The first recorded Thanksgiving Day in the original thirteen colonies of what is now the United States was celebrated by a small settlement of English colonists on the James River in Virginia in 1619. They established a charter that required them and their descendents to set a day aside each year to give thanks to Almighty God for their blessings, both material and spiritual.

A year later, Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in order to escape religious persecution and settle in a new land where they could enjoy religious freedom. In the often repeated story, they landed and then settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they were befriended by Native Americans. One of them, Squanto, who had learned English from traders, proved invaluable to their survival. He showed the Pilgrims how to hunt, fish, and farm in the new and unfamiliar territory.

The following year, 1621, William Bradford was elected governor of the colony, and he declared that Squanto was “a special instrument sent by God for our good beyond our expectations.” Bradford called for a day of prayer and thanksgiving, which was shared by Native Americans and Pilgrims together. The custom spread throughout the New England colonies, although no fixed day had been established.

Bradford and his fellow Pilgrims were steeped in knowledge of the Bible. They were surely familiar with the Old Testament story of the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt, of their perilous journey to the Promised Land, and then of the Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths, which they established as an annual fall celebration in thanksgiving to Yahweh for their many blessings: among them, their religious freedom, and the season’s harvest that would provide for their sustenance for the coming year. It would not have been hard for Bradford and the Pilgrims to see their own situation as similar to that of the Hebrew people: the Pilgrims, too, had escaped persecution, made a perilous exodus from Europe across the Atlantic, suffered many hardships along the way, and now they were safe and sound in a new land of freedom and opportunity. They knew that they had many blessings to count. They knew that they owed a debt of gratitude to God for his protection and providential care. They also knew that they had been the recipients of the goodness of Native Americans, without whose help they might not have survived.

The same desire to practice their religion freely and without persecution is what brought Catholics to the new world. When about a hundred of them landed on St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634, the first Mass was celebrated by Father Andrew White, S.J. They, too, were befriended by the Native Americans who already had the custom of celebrating a feast of thanksgiving every year after the fall harvest. The Catholics joined with about two hundred other Christian settlers to form the colony of Maryland, where all agreed that everyone’s freedom of religion would be protected, regardless of their religious beliefs or affiliation. Like colonists elsewhere, the Maryland colonists also adopted the custom of a fall feast of thanksgiving for their blessings.

In 1789 President George Washington received a request from Congress that, in light of the fledgling nation’s victory in the war of independence, and having now established a constitutionally based form of government, he declare the last Thursday of November that year as “a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and sole favors of Almighty God.” President Washington established the day and called on the people not just to give thanks to God, but also to ask God for forgiveness for any moral transgressions by individual Americans or by the nation. He called for all citizens to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and to ask God to grant prosperity to all people.

In 1863, President Lincoln, in the wake of the Union victory at Gettysburg, established Thanksgiving Day as an annual event in hopes of unifying the nation and binding up its wounds. In 1941 it was made a national holiday.

When we celebrate Thanksgiving Day next week, let us do so in the spirit of our forebears. Let us make it more than a day to enjoy football, fine food, and family fellowship, by taking time to count our blessings as individuals, as families, and as a nation. Let us begin the day right, by attending our church to worship and thank our God. Let us give special thanks for our religious freedom, and remember in prayer anyone who has ever helped us in a time of need. Finally, since we are “one nation under God”, we cannot forget those who have less, or nothing at all. Let us reach out to those in need and share our bounty, however humble, with them.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 19-Nov-2007 9:03 sitemap