Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish everyone a very safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

I will be taking the rest of the week off, but thought I would share with you a little blurb about the history behind us celebrating Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday every November. Enjoy!

In the fall of 1863 the Civil War raged across this country taking the lives of the best young men that this land had to offer and threatening to tear the nation in two. In the midst of such chaos and bloodshed it would have been easy for the country's leader, President Abraham Lincoln, to raise a defiant hand toward heaven and question the wisdom of God. But, that is not what President Lincoln did, instead, he sat down and penned the following words.

"The year that is drawing to 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 such an extraordinary a nature ... (that) 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 is seemed to me fit and proper that they should solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens ... to set apart the last Thursday in November ... 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 ... 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."

Happy Thanksgiving!

photo credit:  Martha Stewart