While you are gathered with your family during this time of celebration, you might want to know the real reason Thanksgiving is an official holiday.

Liberals love to claim that the Constitution requires strict separation of church and state, that the government should not hold any religious belief and was not founded on and by religious beliefs.

They are wrong.

At least 51 of the 55 ‘founding fathers’ of the United States held religious affiliations and beliefs. While they may not have believed in one specific religion, they all believed in God and attributed our country’s and personal successes and blessings to God.

Informally, the U.S. government has recognized periodic days of thanksgiving from the start of the country’s inception. Our founding fathers were against any type of forced religion or belief, but they definitely did believe in a ‘supreme creator,’ and there are many references to God in proclamations and speeches from presidents throughout history.

Our very first president, George Washington, started a tradition of having a day of public thanksgiving and prayer in honor of “Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, at the request of Congress, in 1789:

Thanksgiving Proclamation

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

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 favor, able interpositions of His providence 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 has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go. Washington

A year before Washington’s proclamation, in 1788, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, “The Godmother of Thanksgiving” was born in New Hampshire. This self-educated woman grew up to become a teacher, novelist, and poet; one of many of the poems includes Mary Had a Little Lamb.

In 1828, Sarah became the editor of the first American magazine for women, Lady’s Magazine, which later became Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most circulated magazine before the Civil War.

A day of thanksgiving was very important to her. She grew up celebrating the holiday, and in her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England, she talked about it many times, giving what is thought to be the first detailed description of the celebration.

“The table, covered with a damask cloth, vieing in whiteness, and nearly equaling in texture, the finest imported, though spun, woven and bleached by Mrs. Romilly’s own hand, was now intended for the whole household, every child having a seat on this occasion; and the more the better, it being considered an honor for a man to sit down to his Thanksgiving dinner surrounded by a large family. The provision is always sufficient for a multitude, every farmer in the country being, at this season of the year, plentifully supplied, and every one proud of displaying his abundance and prosperity.”

Sarah not only wrote about Thanksgiving in her books, she used her position at Godey’s to publish editorials and poems honoring the day. Even though many states recognized a day of thanksgiving, all of which happening on different days and months, Sarah wanted the government to recognize one specific day that everyone in the nation would share.

She started writing annual letters to the president of the United States, pushing for the creation of the national holiday. The letter writing campaign went on for decades.

Abraham Lincoln and Sarah Hale

The letter she wrote Abraham Lincoln finally got some notice. Within a week of receiving it, Lincoln had his Secretary of State, William Seward, draft the Thanksgiving Proclamation. Lincoln hoped it would unite the nation, its emotions torn because of the civil war.

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863:

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

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 defence, 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 consiousness 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, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

All of us at Mad World News wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

God Bless.