Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

This Thanksgiving, I encourage us all to spend time thanking God for more than just the food on the table, or the football on TV. So often we sing generic songs of thankfulness for harvest come, and forget to be specifically thankful for God’s working in our lives and most of all for Jesus and his Death in our place on the Cross.

Keep in mind a harvest-thankful mindset means a lot more when harvests are chancy and food not as sure as the distance to the local corner store. It is important for us to remember that every good thing we have, including family comes to us from God. But let us not forget Him who gives such good blessings a sweet rather than a bitter taste. Without Christ, we would have no hope, and such familial joys and harvest blessings would be a bitter aftertaste as we contemplate a bleak outlook for eternity. Having been placed in Christ, who so completely and gloriously fulfilled God’s law and laid down his life to bear our sins, we have peace with God and abundant joy.

Now the point of my post is not to preach but to give an interesting tidbit about me and my connections to Thanksgiving history. Anyone remember the Mayflower and the Pilgrims? The majority of those on the ship weren’t strictly Pilgrims, but a good many of the outsiders chose to stay on with the religious community and join themselves to them, after weathering that terrible winter of 1620.

Anyways, one of those who stayed in Plymouth and became a Pilgrim was my ancestor John Alden. Now many people can say “I am descended from the Mayflower”, but how many can prove it? In my case I have dates and names, which I will showcase below. Note: I can take no credit for the research done to trace this lineage, I’m just a blessed recipient of it!

If you wonder who John Alden is, he is famously remembered in the Courtship of Miles Standish, a poem written by one of my distant cousins, a fellow-ancestor of Alden, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow himself. Other famous distant cousins include poet William Cullen Bryant, Presidents John & John Quincy Adams, and Vice President Dan Quayle.

Refresh yourself on the history of the Pilgrims here, check out this brief biographical sketch of John & Priscilla Alden, and check out this history of modern Thanksgiving celebrations. And again, Happy Thanksgiving!