Page 13 - Leisure Living Magazine Autumn 2017

President Reagan’s
Thanksgiving Proclamation
By Justice Paul Pfeifer, Ohio Supreme Court
The Thanksgiving holiday is one of America’s oldest traditions, predating even the birth of our nation. It was always intended to be a time for us to pause from the hectic pace of life to count our blessings and
give thanks to
God.
Unfor- tunately, that central theme has gotten a bit lost over time. Years ago the Friday after Thanksgiving became the un- official start of the Christmas shopping sea- son. Nowadays, more and more stores are open
on Thanksgiving Day, not even waiting until “Black Friday” to begin the frenetic retail traffic. The “pause” has given way to a mere tap on the brakes.
Thanksgiving, of course, has its roots with the Pilgrims in 1621, but the national holiday we now celebrate didn’t truly get started until much later. GeorgeWashington,whowas“firstinwar,firstin peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” was also the first to issue a presidential proclama- tion calling for a national day of thanksgiving. But even that wasn’t really the beginning of Thanks- giving as we know it.
It really started in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, when President Lincoln issued a proc- lamation setting aside the last Thursday of No- vember as a “day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
He followed up with another proclamation the next year, and a tradition was born. Since Lin- coln’s first in 1863, there is an unbroken chain of
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Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations that has been maintained from one president to another, through natural deaths and assassinations, no matter the party or ideology of whoever resides
in the White House.
It’s a shame that the proc- lamations ar- en’t better publicized because they are thought- ful, sometimes quite beautiful, and always ap- peal to our bet- ter angels. And they reflect the personality of the men who
wrote them.
It’s no surprise, then, that President Reagan’s proclamations are steeped in the tradition of Thanksgiving, and unabashedly illustrate his deep
faith and love of country.
For his first proclamation, Reagan invoked
the memory of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, and emphasized the “giving” part of Thanksgiv- ing. “Clearly,” he wrote, “our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well-being of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well. In this spirit, Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.”
You can easily hear Reagan’s voice in this next part. “Long before there was a government wel- fare program, this spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character. Americans have always understood that, truly, one must give in order to receive. This should be a day of giving as well as a day of thanks.”
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