It’s time again for giving thanks. I thank the Lord each morning that I wakeup and can move my fingers and toes and live another day. I have so many things to be thankful for and I’m sure you all do. We hear so many voices of doom these days that would make us believe that American is falling apart and that there is little or no hope for the future.
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I try to think of America in another way. Things did not come easy for our forefathers. From the Revolutionary War to the most deadly conflict, in our history, the Civil War, we sought our identity as a people. Our nation was built, not on welfare but on work, not on what the government can do for me, but what can I do for my family, my community and myself.
Of course, those who built our nation made mistakes. Our nation and our system is not perfect. Nevertheless, it remains the best the world has ever made. It is the only nation in history that recognizes its mistakes and continually seeks to rectify them.
We are a changing nation and a changing people. From largely European, English speaking people, we are becoming a nation of many people of many languages. Every nation brought both good and bad into our society but mostly the good has outweighed the bad.
After the Civil War President Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving should be celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday in November and that is when we celebrate this year.
We usually think of the first Thanksgiving being in 1621, the year after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but there were several Thanksgiving gatherings before that day. Dec. 4, 1619 a group of English people landed in East Virginia and they had orders from London to have a yearly Thanksgiving thanking God. The Mayflower group feasted three days in 1621 in a spirit of thankfulness for their many blessings.
Texas claims the first Thanksgiving was celebrated at least two decades before that when a group of Spanish who had landed near the Rio Grande, which was originally in Mexico but is now in Texas near El Paso. They invited the natives to join them in prayer and a feast of thanksgiving. Every year on the fourth Saturday of April a small town, San Elizario, just outside of El Paso, marks the occasion with a re-enactment and speakers talking about the event where that meal of thanksgiving took place.
Way before that, in 1565, Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles, so the story goes, shared with the Timucua Indians, a meal of thanks in St. Augustine, Fla., so maybe after all, that was the real first Thanksgiving in our country.
As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year on Nov. 24, let us be thankful for the freedoms we still have and also to remember the responsibilities we have to help keep our country free as the pilgrims and those who came before them hoped it would be.
In closing our prayers go out to the Bird family for the tragedy ending little Tyler’s life.