Tomorrow, Americans will sit down together with friends and family across the country to celebrate Thanksgiving. It's the most American of holidays -- a tradition that we trace back to our pilgrim ancestors who gathered with the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in 1621 near Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Thanksgiving continued to be celebrated occasionally through the 17th and 18th Century, but it wasn't until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln set aside the fourth Thursday of November as a national Thanksgiving Day that the annual holiday formally took root.
I think President Lincoln's words from his first official Thanksgiving Day proclamation, during America's Civil War, are especially appropriate this year as we pause to reflect on the blessings that have been bestowed upon us even while in the midst of our current conflict:
