What is the importance of Thanksgiving for Christians?

Every fourth Thursday of November, Americans mark Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving is a comparatively modern tradition, however the principle behind it has an extended biblical basis and liturgical history. This is the story …

Meaning of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a special time when families and communities pause to provide thanks for all times’s blessings. In each Jewish and Christian traditions, thanksgiving is deeply rooted in Scripture, liturgy, and history.

Origin of the word Thanksgiving

The first known use of the word “thanksgiving” in an English text is from William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament in 1526. He uses the word in 2 Corinthians 4:15 and 9:11, in Colossians 4:2, and in 1 Timothy 4:4, where he spelled it – or the printer set it – as “thankesgevynge”. William Shakespeare also uses the word in Love’s Labour Lost in 1598. The modern spelling of “thanksgiving” comes from the King James Version 1769 edition, where the word is specifically found 21 times within the Old Testament and nine times within the New Testament.

Thanksgiving within the Old Testament

The theme of thanksgiving is richly found echoed through the Jewish Scriptures. Leviticus 7:12-15 describes thanksgiving with unleavened cakes and bread. Leviticus 22:29 adds that it must be a freewill offering. The Jewish festival of Sukkot, also called the Feast of Booths, celebrates the autumnal harvest and God’s provision within the wilderness (Leviticus 23:40-43).In King David’s first recorded psalm he said, “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, and make known his deeds among the many people” (1 Chronicles 16:8), and “Give due to the LORD, for He is sweet; for his mercy endureth for ever” (1 Chronicles 16:34).

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In the Psalter itself, lots of the psalms are psalms of thanksgiving. Psalm 7:17 says, “I’ll praise the LORD in line with his righteousness.” Psalm 95:2 says, “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms”. Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise”. Psalm 107:1 says “give thanks unto the LORD, for he is sweet, for his mercy endureth for ever”.

Then Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the first-fruits of thine increase.” Later in Nehemiah thanksgiving was given for the rebuilding of the partitions of Jerusalem.

Thanksgiving within the New Testament

Jesus practised thanksgiving. Before feeding the five thousand, he gave thanks for the food (Luke 9:16), and he blessed and broke bread in the style of Jewish tradition. During the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and wine and gave thanks, and instituted the brand new covenant that Christians proceed to have a good time in Communion (Luke 22:19-20). Some churches re-enact this every Sunday, and so the act of giving thanks is integral to Christian worship.

St Paul and Thanksgiving

In the New Testament St Paul mentions thanksgiving in lots of his letters. “All that is on your profit, in order that the grace that’s reaching increasingly more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:15). He writes that we should always “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), and “in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). He says we should always be abounding with thanksgiving (Colossians 2:7) and thanksgiving needs to be a continuing a part of prayer (Colossians 4:2).

Book of Common Prayer

The practice of thanksgiving was common to English Christians, whether of the normal Anglican or Puritan tradition. In 1549, the Book of Common Prayer was created to be used within the Church of England. The 1552 edition provided for special thanksgiving prayers in English for specific occasions. There was “the Thanksgiving of Women after child-birth commonly called, the Churching of Women” when Psalms 116 and 127 were to be read. There was “A Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving to Almighty God” to be read “every yr upon the Anniversary of the Day of Accession of the Reigning Sovereign”. The 1662 Prayer Book had a bit of “Prayers and Thanksgivings upon Several Occasions”, these were prayers of thanksgiving for rain, for fair weather, for many, for peace and deliverance from our enemies, for restoring publick peace at home, for deliverance from the plague. These prayers are short, formal, reverent, and scripturally-rooted, collecting themes together. 

Thanksgiving for the Harvest

There was also “A Form of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest” when the prayer was “O Almighty and everlasting God, who has graciously given unto us the fruits of the earth of their season; We yield thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to provide us grace rightly to make use of the identical to thy glory, and the relief of those who need; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world ad infinitum. Amen.” 

Earliest North American Thanksgivings

Christian colonists, Catholic and Protestant, destined for North America continued the thanksgiving tradition and held thanksgivings for secure passage and successful harvests. In 1620, a bunch of English settlers headed to America aboard the Mayflower. It was only natural that after 66 days, once they made landfall that they gave thanksgiving prayers for a secure passage. The following yr in 1621, after that they had had their first successful harvest, it might have been natural to carry a harvest thanksgiving. The surviving settlers invited their recent native Americans friends to hitch them for an enormous feast which lasted three days. It is that this particular thanksgiving story, which is recalled within the American Thanksgiving, nevertheless it is rooted in a deeper tradition of Jewish and Christian Thanksgiving.

Collect

The Anglican collect prayer for Thanksgiving Day is: “Most merciful Father, we humbly thanks for all of your gifts so freely bestowed upon us: for all times and health and safety, for strength to work and leisure to rest, for all that is gorgeous in creation and in human life; but above all we thanks for our spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus our Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, with no sign of ending. Amen.”