This Thursday, we celebrate one of our most beloved national holidays. (Holiday, I believe, comes from holy day). I have read that Thanksgiving is our most popular holiday here in the USA, just edging out Memorial Day and Christmas Day.
For decades, days of thanksgiving were celebrated in the colonies and the states, but in 1863, Abraham Lincoln designated a national day of Thanksgiving to God in November, it seems he was influenced by Sarah Joseph Hale. What I believe is often left out of the national holiday discussion, is that Lincoln's proclamation of Thanksgiving was to our "beneficent Father" i.e., to God.
Sometimes you may ask someone "How can I thank you?" They may say you can thank me by .....
Did God give us a specific way to thank Him? Why yes, yes Jesus did. "The Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption and sanctification. Eucharist means first of all "thanksgiving".
In most of the prefaces after, let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just, the priest prays: "It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks......
So, yes Jesus Christ gave us the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the Mass, at the Last Supper. THE way to thank God.