Thanksgiving+2012

=Thankgiving 2012. What does how we celebrate this National Holiday say about our National Culture?=

Hope you had an enjoyable 5 day Thanksgiving Break. How did you spend your time off? What does what Americans did to celebrate Thanksgiving say about America today?

On Thanksgiving Day, the Plain Dealer published an editorial entitled, "A Day to Count our Blessings" in which it reprinted Washington's proclamation of Thanksgiving as a national day of thanks to be held on Thursday, November 26th, 1789. He did this at the request of Congress. Among his words were the following with which he concluded...


 * //"...that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nationa and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discretely and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alones knows best." (George Washington, October 3rd, 1789)//**

This did not become an annual, national holiday until it was rededicated by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War. Here are Lincoln's words:

//**"And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!" (Abraham Lincoln, October 3rd, 1863)**//