Thanksgiving is a day of survival and rebirth. It is Lincoln's day -- and the best American holiday.

It’s been my tradition to explain the history of Thanksgiving to my foreign friends -- not the creation myth, but the real meaning.

We need to remember. So sharing here. /1

Lincoln was a builder -- of infrastructure, myth, law, legend.
He made Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Even as the country was torn apart by Civil War, Lincoln was trying to build a framework — history, values, symbols — to put it back together again. /2

So just weeks before the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln issued a proclamation about all the things Americans still had to be thankful for. /3

Lincoln knew that what we had to be thankful for, above all else, was that we fought on the right side, for a cause greater than ourselves, in order to show others that it was possible to prosper from freedom and unity more than oppression and stratification — /4

-- and that a nation built from and on that foundation could change the course of history, and of humanity. /5

It's often lost in modern readings of Lincoln, but he deeply believed that the Civil War was the divine price America had to pay in blood for its failures. The war was the fire in which the nation would truly be forged. /6

And if our steel emerged from that fire with the same flaws that we started with, we would still be just as weak. /7

When war became inevitable, Lincoln knew the only way to win was to ensure that the victory fought for was one not only over our enemies but over the worst parts of ourselves. /8

Many disagreed. Had he not chosen this course w/ moral certainty, & been willing to pay the price, the America that emerged from war would never have become the America we are proud to fight for--the America that builds structures of peace & prosperity that transform the world./9

Lincoln’s message was clear: in war & peace, be thankful for having fought wars justly in the defense of the ideals we value, and understand it was not peace that we should seek, but the opportunity to fight for what we know is right and good. /10

So remember this year how much we have to be thankful for, and what the price was.

It is not our victories that define us, but the fights we choose to fight. /11

Sometimes still being in the fight has to be enough. The frontlines seem far away, but a lot of good people believe in America and have paid a huge price to have what we have. We should listen when they tell us what erosion of American values in the world will cost us all. /12

I’ll sign off with a passage from a Teddy Roosevelt Thanksgiving message — a man who knew a lot about time in the wilderness, literal and figurative.
You can call it a Thanksgiving blessing from a devout American: /13

"Failure would not only be a dreadful thing for us, but a dreadful thing for all mankind, because it would mean loss of hope for all who believe in the power and the righteousness of liberty.... /14

... We pray for strength, and light, so that in the coming years we may with cleanliness, fearlessness, and wisdom, do our allotted work on the earth in such manner as to show that we are not altogether unworthy of the blessings we have received." /15

Be worthy, friends. Be brave.

Happy thanksgiving, and stay in the fight. /16