Thanksgiving in the Bible
by editor of Columbus Georgia Online
COLUMBUS, GA. — Thanksgiving in the Bible is the giving of thanks to God for everything that we receive at his hand. We receive from him our lives and the food and drink to sustain us. Every good thing in our lives comes ultimately from God and we owe him thanks for all. Giving Thanks to God is mentioned throughout the Bible and was brought to America as a matter of celebrating His blessings just as we have always done through history.
President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.
Setting aside time to give thanks for one’s blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement of North America. According to historian James Baker, debates over where any “first Thanksgiving” took place on modern American territory are a “tempest in a bean pot”.
Americans commonly trace the Thanksgiving holiday to a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Autumn or early winter feasts continued sporadically in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance, and later as a civil tradition.
Two colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth. The Pilgrims, most of whom were Separatists (English Dissenters), are not to be confused with Puritans, who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Shawmut Peninsula (current day Boston) in 1630. (WiliLeaks)
William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation wrote:
They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they can be used (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterward write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.
Edward Winslow, in Mourt’s Relation wrote:
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
What was on the first Thanksgiving menu?
According to , “Most eastern woodlands people, had a “varied and extremely good diet.” The forest provided chestnuts, walnuts, and beechnuts. “They grew flint corn (multicolored Indian corn), and that was their staple. They grew beans, which they used from when they were small and green until when they were mature,” says Wall. “They also had different sorts of pumpkins or squashes.”
As we are taught in school, the Indians showed the colonists how to plant native crops. “The English colonist plant gardens in March of 1620 and 1621,” says Wall. “We don’t know exactly what’s in those gardens. But in later sources, they talk about turnips, carrots, onions, garlic and pumpkins as the sorts of things that they were growing.”
Thanksgiving in the Bible
Giving Thanks to God is mentioned throughout the Bible and was brought to America as a matter of celebrating His blessings just as we have always done through history.
As for me and my family e choose to worship God, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In closing I have to say that Thanksgiving is the ultimate family gathering to thank Our Father in heaven for our life’s bounty, to honor God for his gracious gits to each of us. To celebrate the family we have built with His help. To thank God for each other. The world may change like weather but our love of God only grows stronger. amen…
“Thanksgiving in the Bible” by editor of Columbus Georgia Online