When you ask any given kid, and a large percentage of adults, what their favorite holiday is, they’ll quickly respond, “Christmas!” I am right there with them – I love the celebration of the birth of a Savior and Friend, Emanuel, and all the festivities and fun with family and friends that this celebration is about to bring. And the presents don’t stink.

However, as I’ve aged, Thanksgiving has begun to occupy a very warm spot in my heart. It is as if today is the calm before the storm that is the joyous Christmas season. It is a day that we may gather with our family and friends and enjoy food, football and fellowship. While we enjoy the turkey, I would ask that you do pause for a moment and count your blessings – to be thankful for that which you have.

My rich blessings are too many to number, but my God, my family, my church and my friends are at the top of the list! How blessed are we to live in this great nation? How blessed are we to be ensconced in a Constitution that declares and protects our God-given freedoms and liberty?

Scholars argue over our interpretation of the actual “first Thanksgiving” and what may or may not have happened at that gathering. I will leave them to the debate. Instead, I will celebrate using my belief of the intent of the day – that we pause and show thanks for the blessings bestowed upon us.

On October 3, 1863, the nation was engulfed in a bloody and shattering civil war. President Lincoln issued the proclamation of the first nationally recognized Thanksgiving. Keeping in mind the collective mindset of the nation, read the last few sentences of Lincoln’s proclamation…

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as 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, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, 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.

Lincoln recognized the divided nature of his nation and the need for a Divine intervention in the healing of our country. While we are physically not at arms with one another today, you don’t have to stretch to make that metaphorical determination. There are issues that divide our nation.

Today, I suggest that we set aside those differences and celebrate that which makes us alike. Because we are 95% alike. It is the five percent over which we seem to quibble. Today, set aside the politics and be a principled peacemaker.

Along with my God and my family, please know that my biggest blessing is you. I love you, I’m cheering for you. I’m your show’s biggest fan! God bless you. God bless Johnstown. And God bless the United States of America. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scott James

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