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Thanksgiving involves being thankful for God’s Blessings By Charlotte_Irene

Thanksgiving involves being thankful for God’s Blessings

 

In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Thanksgiving is a tradition which originated with Pilgrims who settled in the New World, Canadians gave thanks for a successful harvest with Pilgrims and Indians gathering together sharing of their bounty with the Indians bringing much to needy pilgrims who had survived the first Canadian winter the previous year.

The harvest season falls earlier in Canada compared to the United States due to the simple fact that Canada is further north.

Harvest celebrations have been around a long time. Ever since the very first harvest, about 2,000 years ago, people have given thanks for a prosperous bounty.

The first formal Canadian Thanksgiving was held just over 40 years prior to the pilgrims landing in Massachusetts

An English explorer named Martin Frobisher had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Northern America and he did celebrate a harvest feast.

This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving.

In 1957, Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October that Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed."

George Washington, made a one-time Thanksgiving holidays. In 1827, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale began lobbying several Presidents for the installment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, but her lobbying was unsuccessful until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln finally made it a national holiday with his 1863 Thanksgiving 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 defence have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had 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 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.

Abraham Lincoln

Today… Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November in the U.S.A. This was set by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941), who changed it from Abraham Lincoln's designation as the last Thursday in November

The Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving began at some unknown date between September 21 and November 9, most likely in very early October. The date of Thanksgiving was probably set by Lincoln to somewhat correlate with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod in November

Foods available in 1621 included

·         FISH: cod, bass, herring, shad, bluefish, and lots of eel.

·         SEAFOOD: clams, lobsters, mussels, and very small quantities of oysters

·         BIRDS: wild turkey, goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge, and other miscellaneous waterfowl; they were also known to have occasionally eaten eagles (which "tasted like mutton" according to Winslow in 1623.)

·         OTHER MEAT: venison (deer), possibly some salt pork or chicken.

·         GRAIN: wheat flour, Indian corn and corn meal; barley (mainly for beer-making).

·         FRUITS: raspberries, strawberries, grapes, plums, cherries, blueberries, gooseberries (these would have been dried, as none would have been in season).

·         VEGETABLES: small quantity of peas, squashes (including pumpkins), beans

·         NUTS: walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, ground nuts HERBS and

·         SEASONINGS: onions, leeks, strawberry leaves, currants, sorrel, yarrow, carvel, brooklime, liverwort, watercress, and flax; from England they brought seeds and probably planted radishes, lettuce, carrots, onions, and cabbage. Olive oil in small quantities may have been brought over, though the Pilgrims had to sell most of their oil and butter before sailing, in order to stay on budget.

·         OTHER: maple syrup, honey; small quantities of butter, Holland cheese; and eggs.

Take time to consider that which you can be truly thankful to God for

 

 

Ps. 95:2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving

Ps. 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving

 

 

Love and blessings ...Charlotte

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