Editorial: Abe Lincoln‘s generous gift: A day for Americans to give thanks—and eat turkey

We Americans like to count our blessings and usually we have a lot of blessings to count, even when there is much trouble in the world, whether in the Middle East, in Ukraine or on the streets of Chicago.

As the first blasts of frigid winter weather began to blow in, our civic blessings include far fewer unprotected migrant families sleeping in our police stations, in tents, temporary shelters or even on the streets. The crucial recent improvement in that situation has been news for which all Chicagoans can and should be thankful. Especially those of us who don’t have to worry about having a warm place to sleep and good food on our Thanksgiving tables, even if some of us are missing loved ones serving overseas.

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day during the Civil War in 1863 to remind Americans that, even in the midst of “a cruel war of unequaled magnitude and severity,” there still were reasons to give thanks.

Among these, Lincoln spoke of “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” and a nation of bounties “so extraordinary ... that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible ...”

Peace has been preserved, he said, “and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.”

With his call for gratitude and national healing, Lincoln turned what began as a harvest time celebration by colonists and Native Americans into a national holiday. And we like to think he was onto something when he said that an awareness of our good fortune can help make us less divided.

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Celebrated nationally on and off since a proclamation by President George Washington in 1789, Thanksgiving became a national holiday after Lincoln was persuaded by Sarah Josepha Hale, a crusading magazine editor famed for creating the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

After 17 years of writing letters to every governor, Hale achieved her goal.

We can see her legacy today in the familiar rituals of the day: religious services, roast turkey, walks with the dog, mass viewings of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and family dinners featuring turkeys, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce — and televised football games, during which half of the football viewers will fall predictably asleep.

In other words, a very American occasion. Enjoy.

Happy Turkey Day!