Date: October 19, 1984
By: Ronald Reagan
As we remember the faith and values that made America great, we should
recall that our tradition of Thanksgiving is older than our Nation
itself. Indeed, the Native American Thanksgiving antedated those of the
new Americans. In the words of the eloquent Seneca tradition of the
Iroquois, "…give it your thought, that with one mind we may
now give thanks to Him our Creator." From the first Pilgrim
observance in 1621, to the nine years before and during the American
Revolution when the Continental Congress declared days of Fast and
Prayer and days of Thanksgiving, we have turned to Almighty God to
express our gratitude for the bounty and good fortune we enjoy as
individuals and as a nation. America truly has been blessed.
This year we can be especially thankful that real gratitude to God is
inscribed, not in proclamations of government, but in the hearts of all
our people who come from every race, culture, and creed on the face of
the Earth. And as we pause to give thanks for our many gifts, let us be
tempered by humility and by compassion for those in need, and let us
reaffirm through prayer and action our determination to share our bounty
with those less fortunate.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of
America, in the spirit and tradition of the Iroquois, the Pilgrims, the
Continental Congress, and past Presidents, do hereby proclaim Thursday,
November 22, 1984, as a day of National Thanksgiving. I call upon every
citizen of this great Nation to gather together in homes and places of
worship to celebrate, in the words of 1784, "with grateful hearts …
the mercies and praises of their all Bountiful Creator…"
In Witness Where Of, I have here unto set my hand this nineteenth day
of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four,
and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred
and ninth.
