Senator Byrd's Tribute to Thanksgiving – A Tribute to Senator Byrd
By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq. (11/29/06)
Senator Robert Carlisle Byrd is a remarkable and unique individual. He grew up under strained family circumstances, worked his way through college and law school. Indeed, he graduated from law school in 1963, while serving in his fifth year as United States Senator. He presently is the oldest Senator, having turned 89, and recently trumped the Senatorial longevity record of the late South Carolina Senator J. Strom Thurmond, having first been elected to the Senate in 1958, re-elected last month.
His Senatorial career has included service as (Democratic) Majority Leader of the Senate and as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee (from which he has, so to speak, paved much of West Virginia with the funds of Federal taxpayers in the other States, an achievement this writer will bypass - for the obvious reason). By Democratic Senatorial criteria he is not so liberal.
Over the years he extensively has read the history of Western Civilization and of our country, of the Constitution and of the activities of our Founding Fathers. >From time to time he speaks at length (sometimes to the annoyance of a few of his colleagues) upon the Senate Floor but his erudition seldom successfully is challenged.
The foregoing leads up to his recent pronouncement concerning Thanksgiving. Unlike the secularists and many others who just don’t care, he appreciates the religious inspiration of our Thanksgiving holiday. Some excerpts from Senator Byrd’s recent statement about Thanksgiving follow. Many of us find it reassuring that a political leader recognizes the early Christian significance of Thanksgiving and is anxious to speak publicly about it.
“What a great and glorious holiday this is - a truly and uniquely American holiday. A day devoted to family, to country and to God . . .
We are thankful for the Pilgrims - that courageous group of men and women who, in 1620, left their homes, crossed a mighty ocean and settled in a strange, unknown wilderness so they could go to church [to] worship God as they pleased . . .
After months of privation, suffering, hunger, sickness and death, these men and women had a great feast to thank God for being good to them. Think about it. With all the brutal hardships they had endured, with all the death and suffering they endured, they took time to have a great feast to thank Almighty God . . . In the process they gave us our first Thanksgiving. . .
. . . The very first national observance of Thanksgiving, which came in 1789, was to thank Almighty God for His role in creating our great country and His assistance in the forming of our Constitution. This happened when, in the very first Congress in 1789, Representative Elias Boudinot of New Jersey moved that a day of thanksgiving be held to thank God for giving the American people the opportunity to create a Constitution to preserve their newly won freedoms . . .
[Following a Congressional resolution] on October 3 [1789], President George Washington issued the first national thanksgiving proclamation. . .
. . . The father of our country left no doubt about his belief that our nation was, in fact, guided by a divine hand . . .
. . . He asked the American people to be thankful to Almighty God for ‘the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed . . .’ I hope everyone caught that President Washington was thanking the good Lord for the Constitution that created the American government . . . President Washington spent the day worshiping at an Episcopal church in Manhattan . . .
As you celebrate this Thanksgiving, enjoy your families [etc] . . . But like President Washington, you might want to think about attending church . . . and giv[ing] thanks . . .”
Senator Byrd’s message as of this writing is 359 days early for next Thanksgiving. However, the enduring applicability of its message seems obvious.
Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq., is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation. Mr. Harrison is a Life Member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants.
(Printer friendly version) 
Send Feedback
