I’m hosting Thanksgiving this year, an intimidating task for me, and I’ve been too busy with my various preparations to come up with a proper (thematic, colorful, aspirationally interesting?) post for the holiday, but I did want to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, however briefly. May we all have the calm and the company to reflect on what we are truly grateful for in this…..interesting year. Back in a few days with something more substantive, and leaving you with a few images for the day: Trinity (helpfully) serving as a centerpiece until I came up with something more stable, the glittery squirrels I seem to be placing everywhere (tacky I know, but I just love them), and Governor Belcher’s 1730 Thanksgiving Proclamation for Massachusetts Bay. What were our predecessors thankful for? Peace, a good harvest, and the diminution of pirates and smallpox. The basics.
Courtesy Winterthur Museum Collections.
I have therefore thought fit, with the advice of His Majesty’s Council, to appoint THURSDAY the TWELFTH of NOVEMBER next, a day of Public THANKSGIVING throughout this Province, hereby exhorting both ministers and people in their several assemblies, religiously to solemnize the same by offering up their sincere and grateful PRAISES for the manifold blessings and favors which GOD of His undeserved goodness hath conferred upon us; PARTICULARLY, in continuing to us the invaluable life of Our Sovereign Lord the KING, with His Royal Consort Our Most Gracious QUEEN, His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES, and the rest of the royal issue; In succeeding His Majesty’s wise councils FOR RESTORING and establishing the peace of EUROPE; In prolonging the ecclesiastical and civil privileges of this people; In granting his gracious conduct and assistance in the administration of the civil government of this Province; In restoring HEALTH to many of our towns lately visited with a contagious distemper [small pox], and preserving others from the infection thereof; In maintaining our PEACE with the Indian Natives, and granting us a plentiful HARVEST, in giving success to our MERCHANDISE AND FISHERY, and protecting it from the insults and ravages of PIRATES, with other numberless instances of the Divine beneficence: And all servile labor is prohibited on the said Day.
November 23rd, 2016 at 4:44 pm
you might also like to read this: the first Thanksgiving in the words of those who were there and knew they would not starve inth coming winter as they had the year before.
http://www.pilgrimhall.org/pdf/TG_What_Happened_in_1621.pdf
Happy Thanksgiving to you all
November 24th, 2016 at 7:19 am
Very appropriate–thanks for the link. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Jane.
November 23rd, 2016 at 10:00 pm
The cat is most appropriate to the season.
November 24th, 2016 at 7:18 am
Well, she thinks she is! Happy Thanksgiving, Brian.
November 24th, 2016 at 8:24 am
A cat, by self-definition, is always perfect, or at least purrfect.
And a festive Thanksgiving to you!
November 25th, 2016 at 7:22 am
Connie Carroll
Have visited winterthur with Kathy Murphy, several years ago~~~a wonderful place~~if this sign in book’s space were any smaller~~~my eyes would miss it completely.
Happy Black Friday: Connie a carroll