Like many of us, I am planning and prepping for my annual Thanksgiving meal. My family has already given me their list of  Must-Makes, menu items I make every year. Cranberry sauce, made from scratch with clementines and vanilla, apple and lemon brined turkey, garlic mash potatoes, sage sausage stuffing, roasted carrots, and creamed spinach.  A sumptuous meal cooked over three days, followed, of course, by dessert. In my house, dessert means  cookies,  pumpkin roll, and pecan pie. Topped with homemade whipped cream and garnished with fresh strawberries.

As I aimlessly write my list, check my pantry for items that need replenishing, and begin to make room in the refrigerator for  the various pots and pans that it will hold, my thoughts roam and wander. I think of friends and family members who are dealing with extraordinarily difficult challenges. I think of blessings and bounty and beauty, and I think of those without.  As I think about the stark contrast, those who have versus those who have not, I recall the history of Thanksgiving.

Celebrating Thanksgiving as a national holiday came to be due to the campaign of one woman, editor, writer, philanthropist,  advocate for education, and founder of Vassar College,  Sarah Joseph Hale. She campaigned for fifteen years  to have Thanksgiving recognized as the holiday it is today.  In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln responded to her written entreaty and granted her request.

Abraham Lincoln ended his Thanksgiving Proclamation with the following:

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and 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, tranquillity and Union.

Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving during a time of civil strife and war.  The sentiments found in the Proclamation ring as rue today as then. As I whip my potatoes, I will pause, to do as Lincoln asks.  I will quietly give thanks for my many blessings as well “commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable …strife in which we are unavoidably engaged…and fervently implore the interposition o the Almighty Had to heal the wounds of a nation and to restore it.”