The Rev. Rogelio Panton  Celebrant and Preacher     

Louise Meggett, Senior Warden,

Ellen Moore, Junior Warden

Forrest Drennen, Director of Music 

E-mail StBarnabasEC@optonline.net

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him

It's the Last Sunday after Pentecost (Sunday next before Advent), and all are welcome! It's also the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day. Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King (or properly, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King). The feast falls on whichever day from November 20 through November 26 that is a Sunday in a given year. The "Last Sunday After Pentecost" is the last Sunday in the liturgical year (B), The Sunday before Advent, Advent marking the start of the liturgical year (C) four Sundays before Christmas Day.  

THANKSGIVING WAS CELEBRATED in England prior to the pilgrims coming to America. In 1605 an Annual day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in England for discovery of the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot. In the United Kingdom, Thanksgiving is another name for the Harvest festival, held in churches across the country on a relevant Sunday to mark the end of the local harvest. The tradition of celebrating Harvest Festival in churches began in 1843, when the Reverend Robert Hawker invited parishioners to a special thanksgiving service at his church at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Victorian hymns such as "Come ye thankful people, come" helped Make Popular his idea of harvest festival and spread the annual custom of decorating churches with home-grown produce for the Harvest Festival service. The first Thanksgiving Days in New England were harvest festivals, or days for thanking God for plentiful crops. For this reason, the holiday still takes place late in the fall, after the crops have been gathered. For thousands of years, people in many parts of the world have held harvest festivals. The American Thanksgiving Day probably grew out of the harvest-home celebrations of England.