This week, Americans honor a civil holiday established by our magistrates to give thanks to God. The Pilgrims would have been pleased with the idea of setting aside days to give thanks for “special providences” of God. Though they rejected as unbiblical the liturgical calendars of the Anglicans and Roman Catholics, the Pilgrims and Puritans encouraged both civil and ecclesiastical special days of thanksgiving. They also encouraged special days of humiliation, prayer, and fasting.
The practice of the civil magistrate declaring special days of thanksgiving to the God of the Bible is deeply rooted in Holy Scripture. Esther 9:19 give us one such example in which thanksgiving was declared for the deliverances of God, and expressed through feasting and gift-giving:
Therefore the Jews of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.
With the rise of political polytheism, and especially since the 1960s, American Thanksgivings have become more pluralistic and secular in nature. But it was not always so, nor should we willingly surrender our God-required commitment that this nation acknowledge and give thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ (Psalm 2).