I was listening to talk radio on my way to work earlier this week when I heard someone talking about people shopping on Thanksgiving. He said that people would shop on Thanksgiving but not on Christmas or Easter because “Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday.” Really? The Psalms over and over implore us to give thanks to the Lord. Psalm 100 is a particular brief Psalm giving thanks and praise to God as our Creator. Psalm 100:3-4 states “Know ye that the LORD He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.”1 Paul’s letter to the Romans 1:21 declares how man has failed to be thankful – “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” And the first chapter of Paul’s letter continues to describe what happens when people are not grateful to God.2 And this is exactly what you see happening today. We have reached a point in our society where it is no longer recognized that a marriage is constituted by a man and a woman. But for those of you out there that still do not think Thanksgiving is a religious holiday, below is Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation:

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State3

And if anyone is still not convinced that Thanksgiving is a religious holiday, here is a link to George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation:

http://www.celebrate-american-holidays.com/Washingtons-Thanksgiving-Proclamation.html

Terry Read

1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+100&version=KJV
2. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1&version=NIV
3. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm