Thanksgiving: Inspiration and President Abraham Lincoln

For many years, Thanksgiving, observed on the fourth Thursday of November, was my favorite holiday. From what I had learned in school, I remembered only limited information about its history as a day of thankfulness originating with the pilgrim founders who had settled in the northeast in this new land named America. That is until this past September, when after not celebrating a traditional Thanksgiving since I had moved to India in 2003, I found inspiration for how I could think of that year’s upcoming, originally “harvest festival” day. By looking up its facts, I learned of the role played by President Abraham Lincoln (in office 1861–1865).

In the middle of the month, I was returning home along a road whose ditches of varying depths from shallow to unseen were full from repeated rain. Giant fingernails had dug deep and irregular trails in the mud. “I am driving,” I kept repeating to keep my focus as my body tensed then released. If I went too close to the road edge, there was a short incline where a tire could slip down. Where there was a high, narrow strip above water, I might scrape the underside of the car. Finally I could glance up, and what I saw was that while my concentration had been downward the blue had slid through a narrow opening in a dull silver cloud cover. Touched by this small view, I felt more positive about the mild gloom of the day. Wide-spreading roadside bushes, islanded by faded grass but with leaves still drenched in green, were strung with light bulbs of small yellow flowers. Set apart near the gated entrance to a walled development of treed plots, one tall, narrow bush was in bloom. Bright pink flowers announced its solitary message of beauty. At the rutted dirt road to my home, turning the wheel, I released a sigh of happiness. And then the inspiration came. “This is my Thanksgiving, not just the day itself, but all of the days when I have given thanks and will continue to.

With my former thought of missing out now undone, I read about Thanksgiving Day and discovered the old-fashioned, gracious language of President Lincoln’s gratitude as he declared this day to be one of national gratitude for “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” even as he sat as Commander in Chief in the midst of a mightily divisive civil war:

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.*

My realization is, “An inspiration may be a small opening in a set view that causes a positive shift of thought and feeling.”

* www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm