Giving Thanks 3

A Day Set Apart :
Thanksgiving Proclamations & Sermons

		Early Thanksgivings were proclaimed by the individual governors of the colonies on a day of their choosing. There was little or no coordination of the timing among the governors. This proclamation, issued in 1723 by Massachusetts Bay Governor William Dummer, is from the collections of the Pilgrim Society and Pilgrim Hall Museum. It is one of the earliest printed proclamations to survive. Click HERE to read the text.
1723 Thanksgiving proclamation

The first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed in gratitude for the American victory at Saratoga in 1777. The Continental Congress set aside Thursday, December 18^th that "the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor."

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Washington in prayer at Valley Forge

On December 17, 1777, the day before the first national Thanksgiving, George Washington was in winter quarters at Valley Forge. He wrote :

Tomorrow being the day set apart by the honorable Congress for Public Thanksgiving and praise, and duty calling us devoutly to express our grateful acknowledgments to God for the manifold blessings he has granted us, the general directs … that the chaplains perform divine service.

Click HERE for the complete text of the 1777 proclamation and all other Thanksgiving proclamations of the Continental Congress, 1778-1784..

George Washington as President set aside the last Thursday in November, 1789, as a day of Thanksgiving "to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God." Few Presidents followed Washington’s example. Thanksgiving was celebrated, however, in a growing number of states, often on the last Thursday in November. It was not until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that the first of an unbroken series of annual national Thanksgiving proclamations was issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Every year since Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation, the president then in office has issued a national Thanksgiving proclamation.

Click HERE for the text of every presidential Thanksgiving proclamation issued since 1789.

The governors of the individual states continue to issue their own proclamations as well. Gratitude to God, attendance at church, private prayer and charity are constant and recurring themes. Massachusetts Governor Robert Bradford, in his Thanksgiving proclamation of 1947 for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recalled the Pilgrim’s first official Thanksgiving of 1623. Click HERE for the text of that 1947 proclamation.

Just as many proclamations speak to the religious aspects of Thanksgiving, so many Thanksgiving sermons speak to the political issues of their day.

The officiating clergyman commonly takes this opportunity to present some topic of a national character, and to enforce upon his congregation attention to their political duties. Those subjects which he would hardly feel at liberty to discuss in the pulpit on the Sabbath, he avails himself of this opportunity to present.

From : New England and Her Institutions, by One of Her Sons.
Boston : John Allen & Co., 1835.

Thanksgiving sermons often address political issues. Rev. J.S. Gardiner began his Sermon Preached at Trinity Church in Boston, on the day appointed for Publick Thanksgiving throughout the State of Massachusetts, Dec. 1, 1808

I would ask, for what purpose are we this day assembled? Are we not here met together in social worship, in obedience to civil authority, and in compliance with the wise usage of our pious ancestors?… The days appointed, by civil authority, for fasts and thanksgivings, have ever been, in this country, peculiarly appropriated to the consideration of political topicks.

Gardiner then delivered a passionate oration on both foreign policy and constitutional issues, ending with a strongly-worded diatribe against Jefferson and Bonaparte.

Thanksgiving sermons were sometimes used to praise prominent citizens.

Among the topics suitable to an occasion like this, when we are met together to ‘offer unto God THANKSGIVING,’ may very properly be reckoned the services of distinguished public benefactors

preached William P.Lunt in his 1852 Thanksgiving discourse (A Discourse Delivered in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1852). Lunt then memorialized the recently deceased Daniel Webster,

He sleeps near by the Rock on which the Pilgrim exiles of freedom, weary with wandering, stepped when they landed on the shores of the New World. Fit resting-place for the great American

Nathan Holman, in an otherwise rather gloomy sermon (A Sermon Delivered at Attleborough, East Precinct, November 21^st, 1811, being the Anniversary Thanksgiving in Massachusetts) found reason for giving thanks in the example of his ancestors.

It is also a matter of joy that we inhabit those colonies which were planted in righteousness. Our ancestors were eminently pious… The blessings which attended their exertions, and the effects of their prayers are visible even at the present day. As God has owned, and blessed, and prospered this nation beyond a parallel, even from its first settlement, we have reason to hope that, though he may punish us for our great degeneracy, yet he will not at once wholly forsake us.

Thanksgiving was seen as a particularly American holiday. Patriotism and the values of public service were common themes for Thanksgiving sermons as in A Sermon Preached At Dorchester, Nov. 26, 1807, on the day of Public Thanksgiving by Thaddeus Mason Harris :

On this festive anniversary we commemorate, and we exult in, the security of our persons and properties, our national honour and welfare. What we rejoice in, we will cherish; we will maintain. The love of liberty is so ingrafted into our hearts, that the sword which cuts it out, or that hews down the pillars which support our Independence, must be of firmer blade and have a keener edge than that we resisted and blunted which was thirty-two years ago wielded against us.