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The Views Expressed In This Article Are The
Opinions Of The Writer.
Thanksgiving: A Day Of Feasting
By Dr. William Lee Jr.. Pastor
Silver Mount Baptist Church
Thanksgiving Day is here again
and thousands of people will be
traveling by cars, buses, trains and
planes to Join family members and
relatives for a day of feasting and
celebrating that will be highlighted
by TV, football games, parades and
special services of thanks.
Every year on the fourth Thurs
day of November people of the U.S.
pause to express their gratitude for
♦he bounty and good fortune that
>they enjoy both as individuals and as
!a nation. Thanksgiving Day is a
?egal holiday, observed every
where throughout the U.S. and in
U.S. territories as well as in the
"Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
"Customarily, the President of the
■-U.S. issues a Proclamation of
^Thanksgiving Day, and the
! "governors of the SO states often add
^heir own messages.
;** Although Thanksgiving is one of
i!th® moet popular holidays in our
:P*tlon, the idea of setting aside a
day to express gratitude for good
v-fortune did not originate in our
• Country, in ancient times many
people held special festivals in the
f autumn to give thanlm for boun
tiful harvests. The Greeks honored
. Demeter their Goddess of Agricul
[■tare. with nine-day celebration, and
tn a similar fashion the Roman paid
»■ tribute to Ceres. After vthe crops
• I'J'ad been gathered the Anglo
: Saxons rejoiced at a "Harvest
Home" which featured a hearty
JeaBt In Scotland the harvest
"pelebratfon was known as a kirn and
Included special church services and
a substantial dinner. Since
biblical days, Jews have given
thanks for the abundant harvest
with an eight-day Feast of Taber
nacles, an observance that
^ Fr°m
^ for peopleto set
on which to give thanks for military
*'■ victories, for deliverance from
‘V epidemics, and for other occasions
, * of good fortune.
. Thus, since most of the settlers
who came to American probably had
known some form of Thanksgiving
Day in their homelands, it is not
surprising that they translated this
• custom to the new land. The first
> Thanksgiving Day service in what
was to become the U.S. was the
;? one held on August 9, 1706, by
colonists en route to find the short
lived Popham Colony at what is now
Phippaburg, Maine
There are many days in our
history that we as a people or nation
. celebrate, but Thanksgiving Day is
wholly of our earth - and is a special
; -___ .
b: . .
Dr. William Lee Jr.
time when we can join hands and
hearts in not only expressing our
thanks for all the blessings, as we do
at this time of the year, but it is also
a time when we can be thankful for
all of our other special days such as:
Christmas, New Year’s Easter, 4th
of July, and even the birthday of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., and others.
Nearly 365 years ago, long before
we were a nation, a handful of men
and women who wished to live for an
idea and were to die for It, first set
this day apart as a special day of
thanks.
As a pastor and leader of worship
for more than 30 years, I have
always used as a part of my call to.
works hip the 100th Psalms mainly
because of what it has to say: Make
a joyful aeise unto the Lard, all ye
lauds. Serve the Lard with glad
ness: come before His presence with
singing...enter into His gates with
. Th»nk»gtytug: be thankful irate Him
as a church that we ha ve reasonm?
thanksgiving every day, hot just on
the last Thursday in November,
when we as a nation pause to share
In a special day of thanks.
The Pilgrims of yester years
were neither rich nor powerful, they
were men and women of
Plymouth; they had bought the very
ground they stood on by the death of
their nearest and dearest. After
three long years bf foiling and
suffering they had made a small
settlement and planted a few
cleared fields. Behind them lay tl*
ocean; before them stood the forest.
They had come a long way to stand
between sea and forest, they had left
ease and security behind. Even so,
they could not know whether their _
experiment in freedom would fail or
succeed; they could not even be rare
that Plymouth Colony would live
through the next winter. It is hard
for us to realise that; it was what
they faced under their courage,
nevertheless, cut off from all they
had known, alone beyond our
knowledge, they gave thanks in
humble sincerity for God’s mer
cies and the gift of corn.
Hundreds and thousands through
out our land and other lands will
share this special day of thank* as a
turkey day and pumpkin pie - a time
of Joining with families and sharing
with friends. This special day does
not belong to any creed or stock
among us, it dees not honor any one
great personality. It is the whole
family’s day - the whole people’s day
the day at the turn of the year when
we can all get ftsgether, think over
the past months, feel a sense of
harvest, and s kinship with our land.
Thanksgiving is one of the moat
secure and friendty of all our feast
days. And yet it was first founded in
insecurity, by men who stood up to
danger. Thanks be unto God, that
spirit is still alive In 1966.
This year, may our feasting and
dining be sober as we thank God
together for all of His benefits shown
unto us. And yet, If we know our
heart, as ar people, we can be
grateful not in vain glory or self
satisfaction, but for the
essential things of life. May we
speak out from our hearts some of
the real things that truly give rise to
true expressions of thanks. Yes, we
ought to be grateful to those
before us who made this country and
fought for it, who hewed it out of the
wilderness and sowed it with the
precious wheat of freedom. May we
be grateful to all Americans, of pdl
kind and sort and beliefs, who stood
up test
jj <1”t*
. jreat
men, present and past, who have
risen from our earth to lead us, and
to the innumerable many whose
names are not in the histories, but
without whose laughter and
courage, endurance and resolu
ur history would have
The pilgrim did not celebrate a
Thanksgiving In 1622. But in 1623,
after a rainstorm ended a summer
drought and saved the settlers’
crops, the Plymouth populace
again observed a day of thanks,
probably toward the end of July, and
in November, after the crops were
gathered, Governor Bradford
ordered that "all Pilgrims with
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During a Graduate and Professional School Expo
sponsored recently by North Carolina Central
C,re*r Counseling and Placement Center.
NCCU students Eric Jones, left, of Charlotte, and Ava
Barbry. center, of Goldsboro, talked with Jacqueline
A. St. Germain of Boston's Northeastern University
School of Law. Jones is a sealer pebiic adminis
tration major at NCCU; Ms. Barbry is a health
education major.
First Gtizens Ranks Number Otoe
First Citizens Banks ranks
number one among the nation’s 150
largest banks, according to a recent
study conducted by Bank Valuation,
a San Francisco-based bank
analysis firm.
Lewis R. Holding, chairman, said
that he was pleased but not sur
prised by First Citizens’ number one
status. “In the late 1970s, we
announced that our goal was to build
the soundest billion dollar plus bank
in the country,” he said. “In 1982, I
stated in our annual report that we
believed we had achieved this goal. ”
“Four years later, we have not
altered our goals or our methods,”
Holding said. “First Citizens re
mains the soundest multi-billion
dollar bank in the country.”
The study profiles the country’s
largest banks, ranking them in
terms of quality and degree of
credit-risk exposure. Five measures
of each bank’s performance were
analyzed and assigned weighted
values. In order, they are: liquidi
ty, credit risk, profitability, in
terest rate match, and capital
adequacy.
Because Bank Valuation analysts
consider liquidity “the first line of
defense” for financial institutions
experiencing stress, this determi
nant was deemed the most impor
tant. Liquidity is a bank's ability to
support increased loan demand,
deposit maturities and air with
drawals from its current source of
funds. First Citizens received the
highest liquidity rank of the coun
try’s 150 largest banks.
Credit risk exposure was consi
dered the next important measure of
a bank’s strength. A bank’s credit
risk can be partially assessed by
examining its ratio of net loan losses
and or non-performing loans to total
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loans. First Citizens also received
the highest ranking in this area.
First Citizens also ranked highly
in the areas of profitability, which
measures a bank’s return so
average total assets; interest rate
match, which indicates s bank’s
balance between its interest revenue
and interest expense; and <1^1
adequacy, which is related t* a
bank’s equity to tetal tirntts and
equity to total loons.
First Citizens’ number one status
is based on its first quarter, 1986
performance. First Citizens also
received the number one ranking for
the fourth quarter of 1985.
First Citizens, based in Raleigh, is
a $2.9 billion statewide financial
institution serving 155 N.C. towns
and cities with 316 offices.
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