On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation inviting citizens of the United States to "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." His act established Thanksgiving as a national event to be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.
Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln's trip to a small Pennsylvania town, where he memorialized the fallen in one of the Civil War's climactic battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."
Despite our polarizing differences in our nation today, as it was back then, on this day of thanks, we should look to our families and pray thanks that we have each other.
Please keep our troops, who cannot be with their families this Thanksgiving, in your thoughts!
Happy Thanksgiving, Patriots!!!
5 comments:
A big Gobble Gobble Happy Thanksgiving to you.
I'm thankful every day of my life, so Thanksgiving is the big exclamation point on the rest of the days in the year.
We do have so much to be thankful for and I am always thankful for our troops. They do so much and ask so little in return.
God bless them and keep a protective hand upon them.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
American troops - none finer, and always in our prayers..... Happy Thanksgiving!
Hope you both had a great Thanksgiving!
A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours Mark!
Thanks, Christopher! Hope you and your family had a good one, too!
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