Dear Friends,

 

On this Thanksgiving Day, 2016, we have so much to be thankful for.

 

We should be thankful that we live in one of the greatest countries in the world, in which the freedom to dream, invent and build has been part of our national culture.

 

We should be thankful that, for much of our country's history, we have had a government that has recognized that the ingenuity and ambition of its citizens is what would make this country great, even if some in government today are unwilling to recognize that.

 

We should be thankful for the fact that we live in a country that still leaves to the people the right to speak out and defend our values and that we can still make a difference.

 

We should be thankful for the friends and family that surround us, encourage us when we need it and for whom we can provide encouragement.

We should be thankful for our wives and husbands that understand us and support us when it seems like no one else will.

We should be thankful for our children that will carry our stories, our spirit and our essence, long after we are gone.

We should be thankful for our soldiers that go to difficult, gritty and dangerous places so that we can be safe, at home.

We should be thankful for our allies, across the world, that share our ideals of an open society, in which we are free to make choices, as God has granted us.

And, we should be thankful to our Creator for granting us an ever enduring spirit of brotherhood, kindness, inquisitiveness and ambition.


Happy Thanksgiving from The Alachua County Republican Party.






Paid for by the Alachua County Republican Executive Committee, PO Box 358536, Gainesville, Fl 32635.
Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 Thanksgiving Message
As a Nation much blessed, we feel impelled at harvest time to follow the tradition handed down by our Pilgrim fathers of pausing from our labors for one day to render thanks to Almighty God for His bounties. Now that the year is drawing to a close, once again it is fitting that we incline our thoughts to His mercies and offer to Him our special prayers of gratitude.

For the courage and vision of our forebears who settled a wilderness and founded a Nation; for the "blessings of liberty" which the framers of our Constitution sought to secure for themselves and for their posterity, and which are so abundantly realized in our land today; for the unity of spirit which has made our country strong; and for the continuing faith under His guidance that has kept us a religious people with freedom of worship for all, we should kneel in humble thanksgiving.

Especially are we grateful this year for the truce in battle-weary Korea, which gives to anxious men and women throughout the world the hope that there may be an enduring peace:

Now, Therefore, I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby call upon our people to observe Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November, 1953, as a day of national thanksgiving. On that day let all of us, in accordance with our hallowed custom, forgather in our respective places of worship and bow before God in contrition for our sins, in suppliance for wisdom in our striving for a better world, and in gratitude for the manifold blessings He has bestowed upon us and upon our fellow men.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this Seventh day of November in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventy-eighth.