Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is not a Holy day, meaning a holiday that started in the church, but it should have been. Instead, George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving in 1789. In part the proclamation reads, “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God …,” I am sure that football and Black Friday were not contemplated by our first president, but prayer was. Today, other than a blessing before digging into turkey, do we give thanks to Almighty God? I love the roots of Thanksgiving, but I am as guilty as any for us not making prayer a bigger part of my Thanksgiving observance. In my defense, I try to make giving thanks to God part of every day of the year.

The other part of Thanksgiving, since 2004, is that it is National Family History Day. It was on Thanksgiving 2002, that my family history came to life for me. Until then, I knew that my family arrived in America in the mid to late 1800s. We were immigrants and that was okay, but I was disappointed that we had missed the Revolutionary War and much of early American history. What I learned that day was that we had married into families on both sides that had been here since well before the Revolution and even have tenuous links to the Mayflower! I am convinced that everyone has a story to tell even if you don’t know your own family history. Here are five questions you can answer for your family this Thanksgiving. What is your earliest memory? Who is a famous person that you have met? Who influenced you the most? What is your funniest memory or scariest? What family traditions have been passed down or that you would like to pass on to the next generation? Your children or nieces and nephews might really enjoy hearing the answers to those questions this Thanksgiving. Have a very blessed Thanksgiving this year!