President Abraham Lincoln, 163 years ago and during a time of unimaginable division, proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a national holiday. His original proclamation explained the necessity of gratitude for our national character, at a time when Americans had great reason to forget the virtue’s importance.

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” Lincoln’s proclamation read. “To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” Lincoln’s proclamation continued. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. 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.”

We hope that the holiday was a source of thankfulness and a celebration of the sustaining value of gratitude in building better communities and a better nation.