The word “Thanksgiving” appears in both the first and second testaments of the Bible, but is not one of the canonical or “appointed” feasts in the first testament, nor does it rise to what may be called a canonical observance in the second.
Nevertheless, Thanksgiving Day in America rises to an American religious “holyday,” sanctified by the American experience from the founding of the nation through our Civil War when President Lincoln associated the day with the nation’s baptism in blood and its “new birth of freedom,” as he put it. It is interesting that his declaration of a day of Thanksgiving came almost within a month of the date when his historic address at Gettysburg cemetery was delivered.
Thankfulness belongs to our human emotional equipment. Both the theistic believer and non-believer must look beyond oneself for the satisfaction of that instinct. The theistic adherent is spared a daunting incertitude in this regard. Almost all others are thankful - but to what? or whom?
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