SHFR
SHFR
Southern Hebrew Family Remnants
THANKSGIVING DAY:
KEEPING EVERYING SET-APART
Written By: Yarden
As a person begins to walk in Torah and view the truth of the world around them. It's very often that the occasions and holidays kept by the secular world are well mixed with paganism and not worthy of the Hebrew household. Traditions not rooted in the good soil of the scripture wither away under the bright light that is the Almighty God.
Even in this modern time, across multiple platforms, there are sources on the internet that say basically all holidays are pagan and not scripturally based. Listing everything from Birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Halloween, Valentines day, Mothers day, Fathers day, New years, and even Thanksgiving.
While any seasoned scholar knows a many number of these are indeed just pagan rituals in deep disguise, in this one article I would like to delve into the notion of Harvest time and Thanksgiving.
You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days,
when you have gathered in the produce
from your threshing floor and your winepress.
The Torah lists perfectly clear that the biblical harvest time festival is Sukkot, or The feast of Tabernacles. With around five different sources and compounding details in the Torah, it outlines the biblical autumn festival that has been kept for literally thousands of years.
In the traditions of the nations, they also have celebrated harvest festivals but in the aim of honoring a foreign god or goddess. Like the Romans and the festival of Cerelia on October 4, also known as the festival of Ieiunium Cereris. First Fruit offerings of the harvest included pigs and other livestock offered to Ceres, and a celebration of music, games and sports and a feast after a long day of fasting, as we can see from the word “ieiunium” which translates as abstinence or fasting.
Even the Chinese celebrate a harvest festival called Chung Ch’ui, where the Autumnal Equinox is observed as the birthday of the moon and they celebrate the full moon with food and music.
And as the list grows, a common theme occurs.
-The Greek and the Autumn festival Thesmosphoria to the goddess of corn and grain.
-The Taiwanese and the Autumn festival Loy Krathong to the goddess of water.
-The Celts and the Autumn festival Mabon to the diety of the sun.
Each of these days are marked by the idols they serve, and they are not set-apart. The mere fact that these contain idols of foreign gods immediately disqualifies them from being performed by those who love the creator of the universe.
And then at the present day, or closely near to it we have occurred onto the American branding of Thanksgiving. Occurring October 3, 1863, thinking on victory, President Lincoln issued a proclamation about the American Civil War.
Speaking about the events of July 1863 and the Battle of Gettysburg that resulted in more than 50,000 American casualties, President Lincoln wrote about binding our nation back together after a division of such proportions. The proclamation is long, but is necessary to read.
Transcript for President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation from October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States
A Proclamation:
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.
I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
And from that statement I must say, there is no strange pagan worship found among that celebration, in fact the opposite. Viewing the time we live in, we are again being brought about to remain in strife even among our own countrymen, and settle down to become bitter with dispute and remain divided as a nation.
Again I request you to read the words of Abraham Lincoln himself:
"fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation"
