Wishing Everyone a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving 2016

America has exported many things to the world at large and is often ciritcized for the bad taste those things exhibit. There is Coca Cola, MacDonalds, blue jeans, tennis shoes for street wear, ketchup (although to be fair that came from India through Britain). And, there's sitcom TV and Kodak cameras and and big cars with fins, and jazz and rock-n-roll. The world has taken over the lavish commercial part of the celebration of Christmas, and now dresses up for October 31, arguing that Halloween came from France or Ireland, even though we all know it is as American as apple pie. • But, there is one holiday that no other country celebrates. Thanksgiving. It is Pilgrim Fathers and Indians helping starving English settlers to survive, and roast turkey with all the trimmings, and pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving is pure Americana. • It isn't that the people of other countries have nothing to be thankful for -- just compare the Europe of 1945 with the Europe of 2106 and the reasons for thanksgiving fairly leap off the page at you. In that same period, the Jewish people have found a permanent home they can thankfully call their own. And, Russians have freed themselves from the yoke of soviet communism -- we can all be thankful with them for that. Many Asian countries have found variations of democratic government that work for them. And in China, while much rests to be done, people are more prosperous and freer than they were in 1945. • Yet, only in America is there a national holiday set aside to thank God for the blessings bestowed on them as a people. When I explain the Thanksgiving holiday to Europeans, they focus on the Pilgrims and indians and on the traditional dinner menus. But, that really misses the central point of Thanksgiving. It is the day when Americans give thanks to God for their freedom and prosperity and way of life. It is a uniquely American mix of religious gratitude and family gatherings and political awareness. That combination took root in Virginia in 1608, before the Massachusetts Pilgrims in 1621 celebrated what is popularly seen as the first Thanksgiving. It spread throughout the Colonies long before the First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving was given by the Continental Congress in 1777 from its temporary location in York, Pennsylvania, while the British occupied the national capital at Philadelphia. Delegate Samuel Adams created the first draft. Congress then adopted the final version, whose preamble reads : "For as much as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success..." Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens," to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. • Perhaps the celebration of Thanksgiving is uniquely American because America came late onto the world scene, and her people struggled against both natural adversities and political and military efforts to halt her independence. Perhaps Thanksgiving is uniquely American because the United States is the only country in the world overtly founded on Christian principles embedded in her Declaration of Independence and her Constitution. Thanking God sprang from that remarkable combination of Christian ethics and political liberty that led the Founders to write those idea-laden and class-shattering governing documents. • And so, dear readers, as every American, no matter where he or she is in the world, prepares to celebrate the one truly American holiday, I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. Be safe. Be Happy. Be thankful to God for all that you have. Be determined to make the world a better place before the next Thanksgiving rolls around. That, after all, is what Thanksgiving is all about.