What is Thanksgiving all about? | Rapp Report Daily 0190 | Striving for Eternity

The Meaning of Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks to God

Welcome to The Rapid Pull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Have you stuffed your face now with your Thanksgiving Day turkey? Many don't realize that what Thanksgiving was really about was people giving thanks to God for the much that he provided, and we do it celebrating one another.

How Thanksgiving Became a Holiday of Football and Marketing

Now that first Thanksgiving was, well, three days long, and we just make it a one-day dinner. Now, what some people may not realize is that Thanksgiving was the fourth Thursday of the month since Abraham Lincoln, up until, believe it or not, 1939.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to move up the holiday one week to spur on retail sales in a time during the Great Depression. He was trying to use it for economic gains. That actually came under some hardship.

People didn't quite like that, and so because of the opposition, in 1941, he regulated it, and for the first time, it became the fourth Thursday of the month. There's very few of us that are old enough to remember having the Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month.

You'd have to be, well, in your 90s probably, 70 years old or older, but to remember that, and so the reality is you end up seeing that the holiday became about football and marketing. Football because the NFL had started, and what they did to try to promote the NFL was create a football game on that day, and that has become the tradition.

Black Friday and the Loss of Thanksgiving's Real Purpose

It's about Thanksgiving Day turkey and football, and what's it also known for? Well, marketing. It is known for Black Friday now, for the day that people go and start their Christmas shopping, and it has lost the real goal of giving thanks to God.

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