news-record.com

This year, your humble correspondent is giving thanks that our second president, John Adams, didn’t set the tone by which our nation celebrates Thanksgiving.

In 1798, Adams declared “a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer” and to his fellow citizens recommended “abstaining on that day from their customary worldly occupations.”

There was no mention of turkeys, candied yams, pilgrims, football or even heading to grandma’s house.

Adams’ proclamation was one of a few issued by three of the first four presidents that might be recognized as the forerunner of the modern call to feasting and thankfulness.

But after James Madison called on Americans to offer “to their Heavenly Benefactor of their homage of thanksgiving and of their songs of praise” in 1815, the tradition of national Thanksgiving faded from practice for a couple of generations.

Thank goodness.

The Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass., has catalogued all the presidential Thanksgiving proclamations made since George Washington. Although our national mythology traces Thanksgiving back to 1621, people at the time wouldn’t have labeled it as such.

As noted by Boston Globe writer Evan LaPlante in 2007 and a National Geographic online story this year, Thanksgiving as celebrated in the 17th century called for fasting and prayer, not feasting.

Nonetheless, writers and politicians in the 1800s labeled the event as our “first Thanksgiving,” mushed it up with religious ideas and long-standing notions of harvest celebrations and concocted what we recognize as the Thanksgiving Day holiday.

When Abraham Lincoln, at least partly at the behest and hectoring of magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, began the current lineage of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations, he did so in the midst of the Civil War.

“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship,” Lincoln wrote, “the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.”

Like Adams, Lincoln was giving thanks to “Almighty God” generically and calling on citizens to worship in their own particular way. But he was also asking people to remember “all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife.”

Remembering those less fortunate and being thankful for a good harvest are themes that appears in presidential Thanksgiving proclamations going forward.

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson gave thanks for the victory of the Western allies a year before.

“Now that the stern task is ended and the fruits of achievement are ours, we look forward with confidence to the dawn on an era where the sacrifices of the nations will find recompense in a world at peace,” Wilson wrote.

Franklin Roosevelt started what might be remembered as the Great Thanksgiving Dust-up.

According to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, FDR sat down to turkey on Nov. 23, 1939. He wanted to kick-start the economy by lengthening the Christmas holiday shopping season.

The problem, according to the library, was that Lincoln had celebrated the holiday on the last Thursday in November, as had pretty much every president since. And some Americans just weren’t going to budge.

“It was so upsetting that thousands of letters poured into the White House once President Roosevelt announced the date change,” the library writes as part of an online exhibit.

While the great Thanksgiving divide continued two more years, with state governors declaring different holidays from the one celebrated by the president, Congress stepped in and passed a law in December 1941 setting Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November.

Again, thank goodness.

Going forward, the presidential Thanksgiving proclamation settled into a routine. The commander in chief would remind us that in spite of whatever tough stuff might be going on in the world, we Americans have it pretty good so we ought to give thanks.

Dwight Eisenhower’s 1959 proclamation is typical:

“As a token of our gratitude for God’s gracious gift of abundance, let us share generously with those less fortunate than we at home and abroad. Let us at this season of thanksgiving perform deeds of thanksgiving; and, throughout the year, let us fulfill those obligations of citizenship and humanity which spring from grateful hearts.”

John F. Kennedy would not live to celebrate the last Thanksgiving he proclaimed on Nov. 4, 1963. He was assassinated in Texas on Nov. 22. Thanksgiving was on Nov. 28 that year.

“Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers — for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate,” Kennedy wrote, telling his fellow Americans, “the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”

Presidents haven’t been afraid to lay out their philosophical druthers along with a helping of cranberry sauce.

“Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. Long before there was a government welfare program, this spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character,” reads Ronald Reagan’s 1981 proclamation.

In 2001, President George W. Bush referenced the terrorist attacks perpetrated less than three months earlier.

“On this day of Thanksgiving, let our thanksgiving be revealed in the compassionate support we render to our fellow citizens who are grieving unimaginable loss; and let us reach out with care to those in need of food, shelter, and words of hope,” reads Bush’s first Thanksgiving proclamation.

President Barack Obama carried on the tradition this year, paying homage to the day’s historic roots.

“From our earliest days of independence, and in times of tragedy and triumph, Americans have come together to celebrate Thanksgiving,” reads this year’s proclamation. He continues, “Let us be guided by the legacy of those who have fought for the freedoms for which we give thanks, and be worthy heirs to the noble tradition of goodwill shown on this day.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com