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Thanksgiving Lessons [This
is a letter from Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch 2016]
A
little known story of our Thanksgiving tradition is both instructive and
inspiring today as we celebrate this, the 395th anniversary
of the very first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims celebrated
the first such day in 1621, almost four
centuries ago. It was a harvest feast and wasn't called "Thanksgiving."
Note here that, given the current "diversity" craze, this feast brought
together the Pilgrims and the Native Americans – peacefully.
They came together in a common cause: survival. And with a
common purpose: thanks.
Two years later,
1623 the pilgrims did hold what they called "Thanksgiving."
It was a religious day of prayer and fasting. Note here
the role of faith in the early formation of our American customs – the
"Faith of our Fathers, living still."
The Continental
Congress
declared the first national Thanksgiving on December 18, 1777.
And in 1789 George Washington declared the last Thursday in November
a National Day of Thanksgiving.
These declarations did
not make it an official holiday, however. That wouldn't come until a
magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, began a write-in campaign,
eventually beseeching five
I like this story for
several reasons. First of all, it reminds us that there have always been
grave divisions in our country – but that we have always overcome
them and united as one people.
And equally – at times,
perhaps, even more – importantly it shows what one person
can do to influence the federal government and preserve and
protect the land we love. And, really, isn't that our charge
as citizens today?
It is for this latter
reason that on this Thanksgiving 2016, in particular, I pause to
"give thanks upon every remembrance of you." (Philippians 1:3)
And I am reminded anew of the words of one of a favorite Thanksgiving
songs;
We gather together
to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens and
hastens his will to make known;
The wicked
oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His
Name; He forgets not His own.
All of us here at Judicial Watch wish you a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!
Notice what David Stern says about the Feast of Tabernacles in The
Jewish New Testament Commentary: “Families
build booths of palm branches, partly open to the sky, to recall God’s
providence toward
The festival also celebrates the harvest, coming, as it does, at
summer’s end, so that it is a time of thanksgiving. (The Puritans, who
took the Old Testament more seriously than most Christians, modeled the
American holiday of Thanksgiving after Sukkot [the Hebrew name for the Feast of
Tabernacles])” (1996, comment on John
7:2).
This connection is not well known among most secular
“As Leviticus 23 teaches,” explains Barney Kasdan, “Sukkot
was to be a time of bringing in the latter harvest. It is, in other
words, the Jewish ‘Thanksgiving.’ In fact, it is widely believed that
the Puritan settlers, who were great students of the Hebrew Scriptures,
based the first American Thanksgiving on Sukkot” ( God’s
Appointed Times, 1993,
p. 92).
William Bradford, who became the first Pilgrim governor and
proclaimed the first Thanksgiving celebration, used the Scriptures—both
Old and New Testaments—for guidance in governing the colony.
“Though it’s a uniquely American tradition,” adds a Jewish Web
site, “the roots of Thanksgiving go back to ancient
Bradford himself studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Pilgrims took
them very seriously. The idea of giving thanks to God with a feast was
inspired by that knowledge of the Bible. In a very real way, the
Pilgrims saw themselves, too, as chosen people of God being led to a
Promised Land…
“In addition to proclaiming a day of thanksgiving, like the
ancient Hebrews did before them, Bradford and his flock also praised
God’s loving kindness, the famous refrain of Psalms 106 and 107 and
Jewish liturgy (‘Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His
kindness endures forever’)”
(“Thanksgiving, The Puritans and Prayer,” shalomjerusalem.com/heritage).
Contact us at:
"Teach Me" Big Oaks Ranch 6001 CR 267d Kilgore, Texas 75662 www.bigoaksranch.net info-teachme@bigoaksranch.net
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