A day to cherish our blessings

Thanksgiving has become a whirling holiday, where loved ones brave crowded airports and bad roads to reach family. It's known for turkey, pumpkin pie, busy living rooms, and napping in front of the TV while the Dallas Cowboys or Detroit Lions are playing.

That's all Americana, appropriately, because the holiday is so deeply rooted in American history. It is a uniquely, quintessential American holiday. Indeed, Thanksgiving is virtually as old as the oldest active democracy on the planet.

The first national Thanksgiving proclamation came from the Continental Congress in 1777, declaring, "That at one time and with one voice, the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor…"

The Congress set the holiday for Dec. 18, and interestingly, that date fell on a Thursday - a tradition that has been followed ever since. It is also interesting that presidential proclamations for the holiday in the years since then are also unabashed prayers, replete with humble references to God. Contrary to those who insist that the country is propped up on secular building blocks, the proclamations are evidence of just how influential God and Christianity have been over such a long period in our country.

George Washington put forth the first presidential proclamation for the holiday in 1789, giving thanks "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 …"

Proclamations were also delivered at times of huge conflict. In the autumn of 1863, during the heat of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation prayed for "all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore[d] 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 purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt marveled at the durability of the nation and called on Americans to realize on Thanksgiving the unique nature of the nation.

"In no other place and at no other time has the experiment of government of the people, by the people, for the people, been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country in the opening years of the twentieth century," his proclamation reads.

And again in 1987, Ronald Reagan tied Thanksgiving to democracy.

"The cause for which we give thanks, for which so many of our citizens through the years have given their lives, has endured 200 years - a blessing to us and a light to all mankind."

So let's all remember on this day that there is plenty to be thankful for, beyond the blessings enjoyed from one person to the next, and there is more to Thanksgiving than turkey and football.