Before 1863, there was no national Thanksgiving Day. Each state picked its own date, mostly in New England and the North. Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, had been pushing for one national day of thanks for 15 years as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, and several presidents had simply ignored her. On September 28, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, she wrote President Lincoln asking that Thanksgiving be made a national and fixed Union festival. Lincoln acted right away. On October 3, 1863, he issued a proclamation setting apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” The proclamation even admits the blessings were “so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come.” One woman’s persistence gave a whole nation a day to remember where the good gifts come from.
The only eyewitness account of the 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth comes from Edward Winslow in a letter published in Mourt’s Relation. After the harvest came in, Governor Bradford sent four men out hunting fowl “that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors.” Then Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader, arrived with about ninety men. For three days they were entertained and feasted, and the Wampanoag went out and killed five deer, which they brought back and gave to the governor and others. Winslow wrote that it wasn’t always so plentiful, “yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” That’s a grateful heart. When God fills your table, you don’t just say thanks. You pull up more chairs.
Martin Rinckart was a pastor and musician in the German city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years’ War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. War, famine, and plague filled the town with refugees. As one of the last ministers left alive in the city, Rinckart stretched his own resources to care for people, and at the height of the plague he was conducting nearly fifty funerals a day. Out of that season came the hymn we still sing every Thanksgiving: “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices.” In its 1663 printing it was titled “A little table prayer,” which suggests it was meant to be sung as grace before a meal. Picture that. A worn-out preacher, scraps on the table, funerals all day, and he sits down and sings about countless gifts of love. Gratitude doesn’t wait for good times. It’s how faith talks in hard ones.
When James Harrison was 14, he had lung surgery in Australia and needed many blood transfusions. He woke up in intensive care determined to give back. Encouraged by his father, who was a donor, he started giving blood in 1954 at age 18. His plasma turned out to contain a rare antibody called Anti-D, used to make medicine that protects unborn babies whose mothers’ blood might attack them. Harrison never missed a single appointment. He donated every two weeks until he retired in 2018 at age 81, giving 1,173 times in all. Lifeblood credits him with saving more than 2.4 million Australian babies. He liked to say that it does not hurt, and the life you save could be your own.
