As households across our nation gather to celebrate our many blessings and feast on the fruits of our hardworking farmers and ranchers, I am struck by the debt of thanks we owe as Americans. From the remarkable series of events that brought Massachusetts natives and Mayflower passengers to the same table more than four centuries ago, to the sovereign grace which has unified generations of Americans to face and overcome each of their harrowing challenges, Thanksgiving is about coming together.
With our focus turning to those we hold most dear, it’s appropriate November is recognized as National Adoption Month. The blessing of adoption has deeply enriched my family and so many others, and I am a staunch advocate in Congress for initiatives supporting those who welcome a child in need into a loving home, including participation in the annual recognition of Angels in Adoption, a project of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. To find out more about the process to nominate adoption heroes and past honorees from the Third District, visit my website.
Below I’ve shared an excerpt of the great Nebraskan orator and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan’s words reflecting on the meaning of Thanksgiving to our country. Of all the many things I am thankful for, neighbors, friends, and family are at the top of the list. Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.
William Jennings Bryan
Thanksgiving address to the American Society in London’s annual banquet
November 26, 1903
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But on this day we cultivate reverence and express our appreciation of those blessings that have come to our country without the thought or aid of Americans. We have reason to look with some degree of pride upon the achievement of the United States; we contemplate the present with satisfaction and look to the future with hope; and yet on this occasion we may well remember that we are but building upon the foundations that have been laid for us. We did not create the fertile soil that is the basis of our agricultural greatness; the streams that drain and feed our valleys were not channeled by human hands. We did not fashion the climate that gives us the white cotton belt of the south, the yellow wheat belt of the north, and the central corn belt that joins the two and overlaps them both. We do not gather up the moisture and fix the date of the early and later rains; we did not hide away in the mountains the gold and the silver; we did not store in the earth the deposits of copper and of zinc; we did not create the measures of coal and the beds of iron. All these natural resources, which we have but commenced to develop, are the gift of Him before whom we bow in gratitude tonight.
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Thought inspired by love will yet rule the world. I am glad that there is a national product more valuable than gold or silver, more valuable than cotton or wheat or corn or iron—an ideal. That is a merchandise—if I may call it such—that moves freely from country to country. You cannot vex it with an export tax or hinder it with an import tariff. It is greater than legislators and rises triumphant over the machinery of government. In the rivalry to present the best ideal to the world, love, not hatred, will control; and I am glad that on this Thanksgiving Day I can meet my countrymen and their friends here assembled, return thanks for what my country has received, thanks for the progress that the world has made, and contemplate with joy the coming of that day when the rivalry between nations will be, not to see which can injure the other most, but to show which can hold highest the light that guides the footsteps of the human race to higher ground.