THANKSGIVING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20300, 6 July 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THANKSGIVING.

UK MATANGA.

A BOUNDEN DUTY.

It is well established, by tradition and practice, that a right to grumble is among the most sacred of British privileges. Hence tho notion of thanksgiving, intru duced afresh by the decision to girdle the Empire with prayerful rejoicing over 11 Majesty's restoration to health, has a somewhat alien air. Oui American cousins, we must honestly admit, do tilings better, foi they have a Thanks giving Day once a year, set apart by presidential proclamation, to the serious reduction of the turkey population and othorwiso helpful in asserting man's dominion m tho earth. On occasion, we British remember to return thanks for divine favours, and many old folk among us are recounting their remembrances of that other day of national thanksgiving, more than fifty yea:s ago, when gladly solemn festival was held for the recovery of health by Edward, our King's father: yet as a rule wo take much good in easy forgettulness of jt.•> ultimate or.gin. daring natheless to accuse the heavens with maledictions what time anything goes badly wroni'. It is said that the old Christian habit of grace before meat is dying out among us Tis a pity. Our hurrying times may not allow so sedate and conipre hensivo a prayer as once was prelude to every meal in ;* decent Scots home, but into many a shorter catechism of our hearts there could possibly be put thanks as real and almost as devout. One such br: recital had long currency as the Almighty's due—" For what we are about to receive "—and so on to tho speedy end In one regular dining-placo of legal re nown there was a " blessing " briefer still. " Benedictus benedicat," with its correspondint; graco after meat, " Benedictus henedicntur."

The simpler and almost purely Saxon grace hefore meat manv of our fathers used meant, at least, familiarising their children with thought of things to then advantage. Wo ought to play fair with Providence. If we debit it will, our id luck, we ought to credit it with our good fortune, and therein is the merit of thanksgiving. America's Example.

Those American cousins, with their incurring Thanksgiv'ng Day, usually the 'ast Thursday in November, have kept alive a national acknowledgment of this sort It is not wholly national, for thei» president has no right to tell all the American peoplo when they sha'l shut ur» shop and observo holiday or holy day The several States are free to control this by statute. All lie can do is to rccorn mend that everybody, abandoning ordi nary occupation as far as possible, shall keep the day with appropriate ceremony and oven about what they think is proper he can do no more than make suggestion But the day has honour throughout the land, and is Inked with national lifo. Its origin goes farther back than the arising of the G'orious Fourth, with its annual celebration of national independence. North America's first thanksgiving was in 1570, and on a shore that has re mained British. Frohishei had taken thither tho first English colony, and with him went a clergyman, named Wolfall. In the ship's log' there is a record of that Thanksgiving Day: On Monday morning, Mny 27, 1578, aboard the Ayde we received ull the communion by ibo ministei ol Graveaend. and prepared as good Christians toward God and resu ate men tor alt fortunes, and toward night wb departed toward Tilberry Hope. •"le-e v.thumoty prayde God and altogether upon our kneer grave Him due humble .nd heiirty thanks, and Maister Wolfall, a 'earned man appointed by Hei Majesty's council to ht our minister, made unto us a goodlye ser mon. exhorting all especially to tie thankful to Goo for His strange and miraculous deliverance in thoso dangerous places. Worship and Festival. There is tecoro also of a similar ser vice, within the present territory of the United States helu by colonists on the coast of Maine in 1607. But the rea origin of our cousins' Thanksgiving Day as ono set apart for worship and re joicing can bo traced to the action of the first Governor of tho Massachusetts colony. In gratitude for the plenteous harvest ol 1*»21. following a period of seriou3 depression, lie issued a proclama tion enjoining a due observance of a December day. With salute oi cannon the day was hailed There was a solemn procession to the meeting-house, the men marching three abreast, with good Elder Brewster walking beside them. He bore with becoming gravity a big Bible. The govornor with his officials brought up the rear. After service thero was dinner de luxe, the tables being loarled with viands, amid which wild fowl wero prominent They had been got by official forage during preceding days. Hence the turkey is still given pridi of placo Long after all Now "England had taken its cue from this celebration. Georgo Washington proclaimed a general thanksgiving of the forcesDecember 18, 1777, and May 7, 1778. and at last the Congress, having framed its constitution " for safety and happi riess," resolved that the president be re quested to recommend " a day of thanks giving and prayer in acknowledgment of the many signal favours of Almighty God," and particularly in gratitude for the framing of the constitution. This ho did, and other presidents followed tho practice. It was left for a lady. Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, to urge the full nationalising of a regular observance on a set date, and lo hor persistent plead mg by letter heed was increasingly given ii"'it Lincoln took, in 1363. tho decisive step. >o came the day, one of " national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer," to quote Lincoln's proclamation, associated with the high jinks that make it an American variety of Old England's Christ mas Ever, the niiiice pie was imported to complete the thanksgiving indigestion promoted by the pumpkin pastry Now, whatever the flow or ebb of United States prosperity, the • l.servance holds place, Americans always finding something for which t< return thanks; and for that brave spirit they themselves deserve the world's thanks. " Thankful." You who know your Stevenson will be thinking of his memoir of Fleerning Jen kin, the book his wife liked bent, although—or because—it moved her lo tears The professor's father, the cap tain, as you well remember, had no qualms about thanksgiving when lie made request for a device to be hung below the trophy on his dining room wall " I want you to work rno something. Armie: an anchor at each side—an anchor stands for a:, old sailor, you knowstands for hopo. you know—an anchor at each side: and in tho middle ' thank ful.' "

R.L.S himselt, as all the world should know, embodied this sailorly spirit. He bore the brunt of as heavy and confirm ous a battering as ever any mariner has endured, until he was " home from sea," vet kept heart, of grace amid it all Asked to write a motto on a guest list. Ins old mother penned his lines—

The world is so full of n number of things, 1 am Buro wo should all ho as hnppy cs kings.

•' That," she said, as sho laid down the pen, " includes tho whole gospel of R.L.S."

Some misguided critic of that gospel, a Briton prone to find fault with Providence. said m a particularly unhapp> moment that. Stevenson was hut a " faddling hedonist." Tho cheap sneer was smackeu to leg by Chesterton; out that is another story. To bo alert to acknowledge tho divine goodness is what r/iatters, and wo British have now especial cause to set about thi,«.