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Now here's today's news, discerned differently.

A 74-year-old magazine editor named Sarah Joseph A. Hale wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln

on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the day of our annual Thanksgiving made a national

and fixed union festival.

The United States had held such observances sporadically across our history,

beginning with a proclamation by President George Washington on October 3, 1789. However, each state

scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times. Of all the years to proclaim a unified

Thanksgiving observance, 1863 would seem to be the least likely.

The Civil War was raging, by far the bloodiest conflict in our nation's history.

The Battle of Gettysburg had been waged less than three months earlier, the costliest battle ever fought on American soil.

Nonetheless, President Lincoln agreed to this request,

issuing a proclamation on October 3rd of that year, in which he invited, 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. If Americans could

observe Thanksgiving in the midst of the Civil War, surely you and I can do the same today.

Thanksgiving in 2020 is a day of conflicting emotions, as we are grateful for many blessings

and yet surrounded by uncertainty, especially with a raging pandemic.

And yet, the harder it is to give thanks, the more we need what Thanksgiving produces

...