It is at times forgotten -- amid the familiar stories of the Pilgrims' landing near Plymouth, Massachusetts - that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in the context of the Civil War raging in the United States.
Lincoln's perspective will be underscored by Episcopal Bishop John B. Chane of Washington, D.C., in his sermon for the Thanksgiving Day webcast set for 10 a.m., November 25, from Washington National Cathedral. Co-sponsored with the national Episcopal Church's Office of Communication, the webcast will carry the theme "Grow in Gratitude" and may be accessed online at www.comeandgrow.org starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. (See ENS article http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_54217_ENG_HTM.htm )
Cable television commercials featuring the webcast -- which planners hope will become a national telecast for the 2005 holiday -- will be featured Sunday and Wednesday on CNN Headline News and CNN's airport network aired at terminal gates within the nation's 42 largest airports.
A greeting from the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold will be included in the webcast, which will be pre-recorded to feature highlights planned for the 10 a.m. service of Morning Prayer and Eucharist to which all are welcome to attend at the cathedral on Thanksgiving Day.
The liturgy will include readings of excerpts of Lincoln's proclamation, issued October 3, 1863, amid the Civil War. The proclamation's text, with paragraphing added by ENS, follows:
"The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. 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, tranquility and Union."
The holiday known today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale. She urged Lincoln to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival."
