A Minute With Pastor — 11/29/2009
In fall of 1621, the Pilgrims invited their Wampanoag friends to a feast to give thanks to God for the bountiful harvest that would sustain them all winter. Just months earlier, their first harsh winter at Plymouth had devastated them, taking half the colony’s lives. The Pilgrims continued to repeat this annual feast and, in 1863, President Lincoln gave this proclamation and established Thanksgiving as an annual holiday:
“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensitive to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God” (from the tract, “A Season of Thanksgiving”).