November 27 is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It is a time when Americans give thanks for freedom and other blessings.
Public thanksgiving has been an American tradition since the days of the first colonial settlements in the early 1600s. On December 4th, 1619, a group of newly arrived English settlers in Virginia observed thanksgiving at Berkeley Plantation near Jamestown. The settlers' charter required that the date of their arrival in America be observed yearly as a day of thanks to God.
Two years later, English colonists in Massachusetts gave thanks to God and celebrated their survival after a year of cold, famine, hardship, and sickness that took the lives of nearly half the settlers.
On October 14th, 1789, George Washington, the first president of the newly created United States of America, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for what he called “the peaceful and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness...and the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.”
President Abraham Lincoln, at a time of bloody civil war, the costliest conflict in American history, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated on the 26th, the final Thursday of November 1863.
The proclamation was in recognition of recent Union army victories over the rebel forces and urged all Americans to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
President Franklin Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1939 moved the holiday observance to the fourth Thursday in November. In his Thanksgiving Day proclamation of November 1942, as American was engaged in world war from Europe to the Pacific region, the President declared:
"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God.”
In his 2020 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, President Donald Trump reaffirmed the gratitude of Americans “for all that we enjoy, and we commemorate the legacy of generosity bestowed upon us by our forbearers.”
“As we gather with family and friends to celebrate this season of generosity, hope, and gratitude,” said President Trump, “we commemorate America’s founding traditions of faith, family, and friendship, and give thanks for the principles of freedom, liberty, and democracy that make our country exceptional in the history of the world.”
November 27 is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It is a time when Americans give thanks for freedom and other blessings.
