Meaning Of Thanksgiving

I wanted to post this before Thanksgiving - but didn't get the chance. I still think it deserves to be posted.
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The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving
As we all enjoy turkey and the trimmings this Thanksgiving, you may be interested to know that the first Thanksgiving celebration in America was a completely religious observance that didn't include a feast.
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It occurred in 1619 -- more than a year before the Pilgrims arrived from Massachusetts. A group of 38 English settlers arrived in Virginia and set aside a day to give thanks to God for their safe passage. The three-day festival of food and friendship that was the origin of Thanksgiving as we know it today didn't occur until 1621.
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Not Just a Private Celebration, a Public Thanks to God
Ever since, Thanksgiving has been a time for Americans not just to celebrate privately in our homes but to give public thanks to God -- and not just for our material blessings but for our freedom. Our earliest Thanksgivings were in times when that freedom was at its most vulnerable.
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In 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation calling for a day of "public thanksgiving and prayer" -- a day for Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."
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But Washington didn't just say that individual Americans should thank God. He proclaimed that nations -- especially the one-year-old United States of America -- have obligations to God as well. He wrote, "It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor."
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Lincoln Makes It a Yearly Celebration
But it wasn't until more than 70 years later -- at a time when America faced its greatest crisis -- that Thanksgiving became a yearly celebration.
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The Civil War was raging. Three months earlier, the Battle of Gettysburg had left 50,000 Americans killed, wounded or missing. Riots were tearing apart American cities.In the midst of this chaos, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in October 1863 that the last Thursday of November should henceforth be set aside as a day of thanksgiving.
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Lincoln acknowledged that the nation was "in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity." But he focused instead on the nation's blessings, urging his fellow Americans to remember that "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."
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And Lincoln, too, proclaimed that all Americans set aside the day for a public expression of gratitude to God. He wrote, "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they [gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people."