ARTICLES

A Call to Thanksgiving
by Kathryn E. Darden for Christian Activities
11/20/2010

Nashville, TN -

	Web www.christianactivities.com

It was November of 1623. Three years before, the Pilgrims, led by William Bradford, had braved a perilous voyage to a strange world to escape religious persecution in England. Arriving without shelter and with little food or other provisions, they lost half of their numbers that first winter (including Bradford's wife) to the cold, sickness and starvation. When the third year saw a bountiful harvest, peace with the Indians, and less sickness, Governor William Bradford and the Pilgrims felt the need and desire to thank God for their new life in a new land where they could worship God without fear.

A Call to Thanksgiving: William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation

To all Ye Pilgrims, inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience, now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Plymouth Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all his blessings.