National Thanksgiving Proclamations proclaim thanks for God’s providence in the events of the nation and, as President Washington explained in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, “for the many signal favors of Almighty God” in the lives of the people.
As congress recognized the importance of Thanksgiving observance, President George Washington issued a national Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789, designating a national thanksgiving holiday for the newly ratified Constitution so that the people may thank God for "affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."
President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a Federal holiday as a "prayerful day of Thanksgiving" on the last Thursday in November. Since then every U.S. President has always made an official Thanksgiving Proclamation on behalf of the nation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939.
Canadian Thanksgiving is very similar to American Thanksgiving. English and other European harvest hymns are customarily sung on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, along with scriptural lections derived from biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
