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OPINION SHARING A SPECIAL HOLIDAY … BY SHARING EDITORIAL It has been 150 years since Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day he commended to the American people for "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." While the tide of the war might have turned in his favor only weeks earlier at Gettysburg, it would be many long months before the war would end and the divided country could begin to heal. Yet, he called upon the people to recognize Whether the first observance was by the that, in the midst of tragedy and travail, the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, really is of little blessings of life still are easily seen, and gratimportance. What has engraved this occasion itude for those blessings is a proper response. in the national consciousness over the last Now our country is in the midst of another four centuries is a tacit recognition that, col- struggle. Certainly not a bloody one like that lectively, we have it pretty good here in the fought in the 1860s, but still a struggle that United States, and we should look beyond divides us. ourselves to give credit for the beneficence For more than three decades, the wealthiest Lincoln knew we enjoyed. Americans have had more and more to be Certainly, he realized then that the nation "thankful" for each year. Their share of the struggled in the midst of a violent Civil War. national income and the nation's wealth has