Hello and Happy Thanksgiving.

This is Kevin DeYoung on Life and Books and Everything.

Reading today, my latest piece in world opinions called A People of Public Thanksgiving.

For Christians, Thanksgiving is a form of witness.

Today, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.

It's become a day associated with many things, turkey, potatoes, pumpkin pie,

the end of fall, and the start of the Christmas season.

All of that is fine, but let us not forget what the day is supposed to be about.

Celebrating Thanksgiving in America is much older than America itself.

The Pilgrims and the Puritans brought to this country a tradition of special days of fasting and days of Thanksgiving.

Whenever the first Thanksgiving took place, and there are

several claimants to that honor, we know that Thanksgiving has been a tradition in America since

at least the 1620s and 1630s. Initially, Thanksgiving was an informal holiday, observed annually on

various dates, according to proclamations by church leaders and

later by civil authorities as well. The first American president to issue a Thanksgiving

proclamation was none other than our first president. In October 1789, George Washington

assigned, quote, Thursday the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of

these states to the service of that great and glorious being, who is the beneficent author of

all the good that was, that is, or that will be. Instructed by Congress, quote, to recommend a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer,

Washington called upon the new nation to acknowledge,

with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God,

and to unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and ruler of nations

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