I have few memories of the Pilgrim story from my childhood. I seem to vaguely recall making a turkey out of construction paper, but I am not sure. I don't believe that we ever had a First Thanksgiving play at any of the schools that I attended. Perhaps we did and the event never registered as important to me. Instead, my Thanksgiving impressions are firmly associated with Abraham Lincoln. Once again, I am ceding my holiday message to America's great orator and beloved fallen hero.
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.
Washington DC, October 3, 1863
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
* https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/abraham-lincolns-proclamation-thanksgiving