Up a Tree Extra: English Thanksgiving


We often celebrate various events with proclamations of Thanksgiving, especially when we've undergone some traumatic event we think people should collectively remember that event in the future. Leaders down through U.S. history have issued such proclamations, and eventually we settled on one day in November as a national day of thanksgiving, with Congress passing legislation to set the fourth Thursday in November to be our official day of Thanksgiving. 

The English sorta did it the other way around. A year after the failed attempt by Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators to blow up Parliament with the king and his wife in the building Parliament passed the Observance of the Fifth of November Act, subtitled "An act for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God every year on the fifth day of November." 

The opening lines credit God with the deliverance of his church and the protection of religious kings and states and aver that no nation has been blessed with greater benefits than those it now enjoys under "the most great, learned and religious King that ever reigned over the nation," having true and free profession of the gospel. (As long as you were Anglican is not in the text but pretty much understood.)

It goes on to decry the "malignant and devilish papists, jesuits [sic} and seminary priests" who conspired blow up the King, Queen, prince, and the lords temporal and spiritual -- these last two being the members of the houses of Parliament and invited leaders of the Anglican Church -- with (gasp) gunpowder.

The law calls gunpowder "an invention so inhumane, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of ..." Again, this was apparently true because of the intended use as no mention is made of using gunpowder in war or against any of the Crown's enemies. The Act is definitely an irony-free zone. 

The act then says God inspired the king to interpret the dark meaning by some correspondence he'd seen and miraculously discern the plot against him mere hours before its execution. No mention is made that the guards who found Fawkes were conducting a final security sweep before the opening of Parliament's session. Didn't fit the narrative, I suppose. Also reference the last sentence of the previous paragraph. 

Given all of God's mercies, a perpetual remembrance should be held to recall "THIS JOYFUL DAY OF DELIVERANCE ..." Emphasis in the original.

To perform this remembrance every minister in every place of worship were to hold a morning prayer service on Nov. 5 to say a prayer of thanks to God for the deliverance from obliteration, and everyone living in England and any place it controlled were required to be in attendance. No penalty was given for failure to attend, which loophole I'm sure was exploited often by the Catholic residents of the lands. Sermons could also be preached, and what preacher would pass that opportunity up? 

After the prayers and preaching, the minister was required to read the act to the assembly.

The act was repealed in 1859 after a series of acts in the previous 200 years provided freedom of worship and official tolerance for Catholicism in the realm. But as been pointed out over the ages, laws don't necessarily change human hearts and attitudes. The celebration began morphing from a religious holiday into the excuse to have a celebration with fireworks it is today.

One other note. In 1622, King James asked John Donne to write a sermon for the Thanksgiving service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where Donne was a priest and dean of the cathedral. You remember Donne, right? "No man is an island," "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"? That Donne. BTW, he also gave us, "Go and catch a falling star." I don't think he counseled putting it in your pocket, but I haven't looked it up.

The sermon runs to almost 30 pages for the text I read and is basically a dense argument for God having established kings as his rightful rulers and representatives on Earth who should be honored and obeyed as such. And this holds true whether the king is a good and benevolent ruler or a rat because he is God's ... well, you know. You can find it online, but I'll warn you, it's a heavy slog, without taking into account the 17th English spelling.

Image: A detail of the Observance of the Fifth of November act, from parliament.uk

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