Through the ages, many peoples, cultures, and religions have observed feasts and prayers of thanksgiving for harvests. Several Hebrew festivals were related to harvests, as well as to historical events. In medieval and early modern Europe, including England, there were various local occasions when thanks were offered, and over time, local forms of prayer for autumn harvest festivals developed. In colonial North America, English explorers and colonists gave thanks in several places that later became the US and Canada. In the 1789 American Book of Common Prayer, there was a Thanksgiving Day Office, and parts of this office are still reflected in the 1928 BCP. The 1962 Canadian BCP also includes forms for harvest thanksgiving.
It is a normal part of Christian worship to give God thanks for all things. It is also appropriate that we should pause in autumn to give special thanks for the products of the land which sustain and enrich life. This impulse is admirably expressed in the 1928 Collect for Thanksgiving Day:
O most merciful Father, who hast blessed the labours of the husbandman in the returns of the fruits of the earth; We give thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness to us, that our land may still yield her increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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