My maternal grandmother lived in a modest home on Salt Lake City’s west side. Fronting 900 West just up the street and opposite the old Chapman Library, two large windows on either side of the front door were tucked under a covered front porch which spanned the width of the house.
Behind one window was her cozy living room while her bedroom sat behind the other, giving a perfectly aligned view above the rooftops of the Walker Bank sign perched on top of the Walker Center at 200 South and Main Street.
After dark, the colors of the sign provided a forecast for pending weather; blue meant clear, blinking blue meant cloudy, red meant rain, and blinking red meant snow. In my mind, there was never a better moment than seeing the Walker Bank sign, in its blinking red glory, forecasting snow on Thanksgiving night.
On the other side of the wall from grandma’s front bedroom sat a smaller bedroom with a tiny bath tucked into a small hall.
Beyond the living room, was the kitchen, a beacon of light each and every Thanksgiving. It was here where my aunts and grandmother prepared the feast that filled the house with the familiar aroma of Thanksgiving and painted the living room window with visible droplets of steam.
At the back of the kitchen, a door led to the infamous sealed-in back porch. Normally a place for storage and the location of the cellar door, it came alive each November as we sat on chairs, trunks, or whatever was available around long tables that ran from one end of the room to the other around a veritable feast.
We prayed, we laughed, we talked, and we ate ourselves into oblivion.
Sitting in the middle was Grandma Williams, who was at her happiest surrounded by her five children and their spouses, nineteen grandchildren, and great grandchildren who, year in and year out, continued to boost the family population.
Our family was very close and tradition was everything. The thought of moving to a larger place seemed downright sacrilegious.
Her house was small, however we happily sat together on that porch and in the living room under the soft glow of lamps and the warmth of her love.
Those wonderful smells, sounds, and feelings have never left me.
Thanksgiving has a long tapestry of history in our country.
The first Thanksgiving is said to have been held in 1621 when the Pilgrims, just over fifty in number, invited a group of Wampanoag people to celebrate their first bountiful harvest.
Having endured an extremely difficult first year with sickness, death, and scarcity, they had much to be thankful for.
While it is not known what they would have eaten, most accounts list items such as venison, turkey and other fowl, fish, corn, and squash.
Shortly after becoming our nation’s first president, George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation on October 3, 1789. The intent was to give thanks for the role providence played in creating our new country and its Constitution. Washington wrote,
“Now therefore I do recommend and assign 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–That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.”
The details of that proclamation are worth reading over and over again. Just a few years removed from the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, a people who sacrificed everything for what we take for granted today, gave thanks to the Creator whose hands they saw in the delivery of their great cause of freedom.
Thanksgiving became a national holiday during another era of struggle and trial of America’s great experiment. With the Civil War raging in its third year, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday on October 3, 1863, to express gratitude for the Union’s crucial victory at Gettysburg.
Lincoln established the last Thursday of November as “a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
Later, in 1942, to extend holiday shopping, President Franklin D. Roosevelt altered the language and established Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of each November.
Since then, Thanksgiving has grown and created a culture and rhythm all to itself with additions such as Norman Rockwell, football, and Black Friday.
However, in my mind, Thanksgiving is all about taking the time to give thanks for family, freedoms, faith, country, prosperity, and God’s hands in my life. As we celebrate with those who we love most, may we be grateful and remember the times of difficulty and sacrifice that spawned those early celebrations and proclamations of 1621, 1789, and 1863.
In 1789 Washington wrote of the beneficent author of all the good that was, is and would be.
How true that is.
May we continue that same course of tranquility, union, and plenty which they expressed gratitude for and be grateful for the peace and continuity that our Constitution affords us.
We stand on the shoulders of generations who gave up much and fought for the blessings we give thanks for each Thanksgiving. May we be up to the same challenge to endure and to protect and preserve what they have given us.
Happy Thanksgiving my friends.
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