There are two wars dragging on in the Middle East, with
additional casualties announced daily. The housing market has
collapsed, which has caused people to lose their homes. Consumer
confidence is plunging.
There are two wars dragging on in the Middle East, with additional casualties announced daily. The housing market has collapsed, which has caused people to lose their homes. Consumer confidence is plunging.
Despite this unpleasantness, Thursday is a time officially set aside to express gratitude; the congregation of Gilroy’s Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 1735 Hecker Pass Highway, invites local residents to gather for a Thanksgiving Eve service at 7:30 p.m.
The Rev. Ron Koch, pastor, explains that some people are too busy on Thanksgiving Day to attend worship services. Traveling out of town, preparing the traditional holiday feast and enjoying football games all make it hard to get to church Thursday.
There are other benefits to scheduling the service the evening before. Evening allows for a more peaceful, contemplative experience, an ambiance of soft candlelight, using burning tapers richly symbolic of Jesus as Light of the World.
The liturgy will be taken from “Evangelical Lutheran Worship,” a combination prayer book-hymnal adopted by the congregation just last month. It will consist of an Evening Prayer Vespers with appropriate scripture readings, hymns, sermon and a Holy Communion Service, “The Holy Eucharist” (Greek for “great thanksgiving”). Music will be provided by the parish’s pipe organ, adult choir and handbell choir with opportunities for congregational singing.
Pastor Koch invites the community to this traditional gathering to express thanks for what is good in life: “Whom do we thank for a loving family, comfortable home? Ourselves? Come and join in thanking God for the blessings we so often take for granted.” For more information call (408) 842-2713.
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Students learn early that the first Thanksgiving celebration was held by the Plymouth Colony settlers in December of 1621. After their first successful harvest, the colonists invited members of the local Native American tribe, and the feasting lasted for days.
In succeeding years the holiday was observed only sporadically. Each colony (and later, state) followed its own whim as to when to celebrate a day of thanksgiving, or whether to celebrate it at all.
In 1789, during his first year as president, George Washington proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 26, a day to thank God “for all the great and various favors which he has been pleased to confer upon us.” And in that same year, the newly-formed Episcopal Church (separated from the Church of England) included among the official Holy Days in its new prayer book the instruction: “In November, the first Thursday shall be observed as a Day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the fruits of the earth and all other blessings of His merciful providence.”
But there was no real consistency in secular celebrations of Thanksgiving until a magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, began a crusade in 1827 to establish a national day devoted to giving thanks to God. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation making Thanksgiving a national holiday, observed on the last day of November. Lincoln’s choice became the traditional date until the Great Depression.
In 1939 a group of businessmen convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move the day forward to the third Thursday, thereby creating a longer Christmas shopping season. (How quaint that such shopping began after Thanksgiving in those days!) When FDR chose the earlier date again the following year, Congress disagreed. A Joint Congressional Committee Resolution in 1941 permanently returned the observance to the fourth Thursday, and it is now a legal holiday in all states and U.S. possessions.
