From the Banks of Burcham Creek…
Thanksgiving 2025 Edition…
Thankful… So Thankful…
- Hayden Childs, Editor
***
“I will praise the name of God with song.
And I will give Him great honor with much thanks.”
(Psalm 69:30)
Thanksgiving creates abundance.
- Ann Voskamp
Forever on Thanksgiving Day
the heart will find the pathway home.
- Wilbur D. Nesbit
He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks, but in part.
the full,
The true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart.
- J.A. Shedd
If you want to turn your life around,
try thankfulness.
It will change your life mightily.
- Gerald Good
Happiness cannot be traveled to,
owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience
of living every minute with love, grace,
and gratitude.
- Denis Waitley
Reflect upon your present blessings,
of which every man has plenty.
not on your past misfortunes,
of which all men have some.
- Charles Dickens
As we
express our gratitude,
we must never forget that the
highest appreciation is
not to utter words,
but to live by them.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
***
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come…
1 Come, ye thankful people, come,
raise the song of harvest home;
all is safely gathered in,
ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
for our wants to be supplied;
come to God's own temple, come,
raise the song of harvest home.
2 All the world is God's own field,
fruit as praise to God we yield;
wheat and tares together sown
are to joy or sorrow grown;
first the blade and then the ear,
then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we
wholesome grain and pure may be.
3 For the Lord our God shall come,
and shall take the harvest home;
from the field shall in that day
all offenses purge away,
giving angels charge at last
in the fire the tares to cast;
but the fruitful ears to store
in the garner evermore.
4 Even so, Lord, quickly come,
bring thy final harvest home;
gather thou thy people in,
free from sorrow, free from sin,
there, forever purified,
in thy presence to abide;
come, with all thine angels, come,
raise the glorious harvest home.
- Henry Alford (1844)
***
So Good to Me – Phil Wickham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxsTvuP1w_k&list=RDoxsTvuP1w_k&start_radio=1
***
Proclamation 3560—Thanksgiving Day, 1963
The American
Presidency Project
35th President of the United States: 1961 ‐ 1963
4–5 minutes
________________________________________
By the President of
the United States of America
A Proclamation
Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts,
far from home in a lonely
wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving.
On the appointed
day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety,
for the health of
their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love
which bound them
together and for the faith which united them with their God.
So too when the colonies achieved their independence,
our first President
in the first year of his first Administration proclaimed
November 26, 1789,
as "a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed
by acknowledging
with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God"
and called upon the
people of the new republic to "beseech Him to pardon our
national and other
transgressions... to promote the knowledge and practice of true
religion and virtue.
. . and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of
temporal prosperity
as He alone knows to be best."
And so too, in the midst of America's tragic civil war,
President Lincoln
proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as a day to
renew our gratitude
for America's "fruitful fields," for our "national strength and
vigor," and for
all our "singular deliverance's and blessings."
Much time has passed since the first colonists came to rocky shores and dark
forests
of an unknown
continent, much time since President Washington led a young people
into the experience
of nationhood, much time since President Lincoln saw the
American nation
through the ordeal of fraternal war--and in these years our
population, our
plenty and our power have all grown apace.
Today we are a nation of nearly two hundred million souls, stretching from coast
to coast, on into
the Pacific and north toward the Arctic, a nation enjoying the fruits
of an ever-expanding
agriculture and industry and achieving standards of living
unknown in previous history.
We give our humble thanks for this.
Yet, as our power has grown, so has our peril.
Today we give our
thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit
from our
forefathers--for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and
strength of will,
for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which
we must seek every
day to emulate.
As we express our
gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is
Not to utter words
but to live by them.
Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings—
let us be humbly thankful
for inherited ideals--and let us resolve to share those
blessings and those
ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America,
in consonance with
the joint resolution of the Congress approved December 26, 1941,
55 Stat. 862 (5
U.S.C. 87b), designating the fourth Thursday of November in each
year as Thanksgiving
Day, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 28, 1963,
as a day of national
thanksgiving.
On that day let us gather in sanctuaries dedicated to worship and in homes
blessed
by family affection
to express our gratitude for the glorious gifts of God;
and let us earnestly
and humbly pray that He will continue to guide and sustain us in
the great unfinished
tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all
men and nations and
of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the
United States of
America to be affixed. DONE at the City of Washington this fourth
day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three,
and of the Independence
of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-eighth.
[See APP Note.]
JOHN F. KENNEDY
By the President:
DEAN RUSK,
Secretary of State
APP Note: In
the Public Papers of the Presidents, the editor’s note that this document
Was "released"
on November 5, 1963, but "dated" on November 4.
We follow the PPPUS
in assigning the date of November 5, 1963.
John F. Kennedy, Proclamation 3560—Thanksgiving Day, 1963
Online by Gerhard
Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency
Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236639
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-3560-thanksgiving-day-1963
***
A History of Thanksgiving Day in America…
