Thank God for Thanksgiving

SF Gate (Chronicle) ^ | November 25th, 2002 | Adam Sparks

[sfwarrior]

Millions of parents throughout the land are lamenting the absence of their kids on Thanksgiving. Many are simply missing in action. "You don't call, you don't write, you don't love us anymore" is the plaintive cry of mothers heard throughout our nation. Grown children are frequently just too darn busy to commune with the family. They are frequently having their Thanksgiving dinners at Denny's, at drive-throughs or just curled up with some brewskies, watching football with their buddies.

Few understand the solemnity of the holiday. It was our first and perhaps most important national holiday. It still is. It may be a surprise to hear, but the original intent of the holiday was not just to gorge ourselves over a big meal with Mom and Dad. It was meant to be a day of reflection and of national unity, filled with prayer and introspection.

Three years after the Pilgrims' arrival and just two years after their first Thanksgiving, on November 29, 1623, Plymouth colony Gov. William Bradford made this official, politically incorrect, proclamation:

"To all ye Pilgrims:

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat peas, beans, squashes and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according...

[sfwarrior]

Enjoy your Thanksgiving week, but remember that Thanksgiving, our first national holiday, was never really about turkey, relatives, parents and gorging yourself. It was our first national holiday and it was always meant to be a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to God. Check out what George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who established the holiday had to say about it in SFGATE.com http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/11/25/asparks.DTL

[sfwarrior]

Ping

[LiteKeeper]

And lest we forget, Plymouth Colony was a church planting project - and became the seed bed of freedom in the New World.