The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-11-19
Thanksgiving Day Handed Down
 From Stone Age, Historians Say

Humanity has expressed its grati- tude in one way or another since the first cave man smashed the skull of saber-tooth tiger with stone axe and removed the necessity of run ming down new wife.
 The sacrifical altar was one of the first pieces of architecture pagan man devised, and the sacrifice was crude method of expressing thanks to heaven.
 During one period of ancient his tory there were more thanksgiving days in the year than there were work days. This was true in early Greece and Rome, antedating the Christian era by hundreds of years. Aztecs in Mexico were celebrating Thanksgiving Day each fall before Christopher Columbus was born. The hanksgiving festival for a bountiful harvest is the first public holiday history records. Naked tribes in Iran. and Tibet celebrated Thanks giving Day before King Philip mar ried the mother of Alexander the Great.
 In the feast of the passover the Jews celebrated their thanksgiving before the walls of Jerusalem were built.
 Thanksgiving Day, in one form or another, has been celebrated in va
 
 5000 years. Some nations, recogniz- ing a god, expressed their gratitude with the annual fall festival in his honor. Others inaugurated the occa- sion, and continued it, for success in battle, the repulsion of invasion, de- livery from an oppressor. There is scarcely a nation on earth that has not been celebrating Thanksgiving Day for many centuries, some for religious significance, others for va ried reasons.
 The curious claim of some New England writers to the origin of Thanks sgiving Day in that area is so patently absurd as to be unworthy of note. casual perusal of the chap ter on festivals" in the Bncyclope- dia Britannica, to say nothing of a glance at ancient histories, will con vince all but the obtuse of the fal- lacy of the claim.
 Thanksgiving celebrations were held throughout this continent by the Indians before Richard the First went on the great crusade. Feastins and dancing in joy over the fall har- vest was the way the savage eX- pressed his gratitude to Deity for bounties received. Recognizing q Supreme Being, the primitive hu- man sought to propitiate him through recognition of bounties re- ceINeu.
 Matter of State Option.
 In modern American times. and older days as well, Thanksgiving Day has never been accorded recognition as a statutory holiday. To this day its celebration is a matter of choice with the state. the city and the in- dividual
 Throughout all history Thanksgiv- ing Day. in many ciimes and many denominations has been religious festival. and though the Old Testa- ment cites it in more than one chap ter, there is no reference to it at all in the New Testament, yet the earlier Christian denominations recognized the occasion under a number of diff ferent names.
 As earlier state assemblies had done in the old world. the Congress of the Colonies recommended days of thanksgiving during the revolu- tion.
 The first official or national proc lamation was issued by President Washington in 17S9. Since then other Presidents have issued the call to give thanks, but never as an or der. Gradually the day in the United States lost some of it's religious sig nificance, took on the hue of a happy holiday and is becoming more and more an occasion of merrymaking.
 Out of courtesy to the nations chief executives, business and other estates recognized the impromptu holiday. until in this day and time t