Two Thanksgiving Day Proclamations

Three United States presidents have issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations. George Washington issued the first proclamation, as the new Republic was getting started in 1798. James Madison issued one in 1815. Abraham Lincoln issued two, one in 1862 and one in 1863. But it wasn't until the 1863 proclamation that Thanksgiving became an annual observance. 

The first proclamation by Washington and the second by Lincoln are posted at Dancing Priest today. 

Top photograph by Virginia Simionato via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Thankfulness is a Year-long Habit – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

“The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day ,” poem by Lydia Maria Child – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thanksgiving Sonnet – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

A Nation’s Gratitude: The First Presidential Thanksgiving – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

Thanksgiving: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

 

The Year Washington (Almost) Canceled Thanksgiving – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving

We celebrate Thanksgiving Day because of Henry VIII, the Gunpowder Plot, the 1619 landing of 38 English colonists in Virginia (without slaves), the Pilgrims, the end of the American Revolution, the beginning of the American Republic, the Civil War, and the need to stimulate the economy in the late 1930s. And it might have been called Evacuation Day.  

Thanksgiving as we know it today in the United States evolved over a period of some 400 years. The idea of thanksgiving observances goes back to the Protestant Reformation in England under Henry VIII, consolidating a rather large number of thanksgiving holidays during the Roman Catholic period. Special days of Thanksgiving would be called for military victories and for deliverance from such events as the Gunpowder Plot of 1606.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Top photograph: Union soldiers celebrate the first national Thanksgiving Day in 1863.