Giving Thanks

Hope everybody had a beautiful Thanksgiving!

Keeping this one short so I can get back to family.

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to DC to see a great friend get sworn in as Ambassador to Fiji. It was beautiful.

The first stop we made of our trip was to the Lincoln Memorial — and Lincoln is the first president to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday — so I figured we should give a little-shout out to Abraham Lincoln.

We have Lincoln to thank for our days off and time with family — more importantly, we have Lincoln to thank for persevering in his fight for recognition of the equality of all men and the preservation of the union.

It cost him his life.

Here’s a few of his own words about the first National Holiday is Thanksgiving.

“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, tranquillity and Union.

Abraham Lincoln 1863

I think we could take those words to heart even now, don’t you?

Off to spend some time with family. Have a beautiful weekend!