Published: November 7, 2025
Liberia observed National Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, a holiday grounded not in festivity or cultural pageantry but in reflection, humility and moral reckoning. Enacted in 1883 and reaffirmed each year by presidential proclamation, Thanksgiving in Liberia calls citizens to worship and prayer, to acknowledge God’s grace and to reflect on the nation’s continued existence through long seasons of difficulty. This year’s proclamation again urged Liberians to gather in churches and mosques to offer gratitude for divine protection and national perseverance.
Yet, as we bowed our heads, the moment invited a deeper question, one that is too often ignored: What exactly are we giving thanks for, and how do we translate gratitude into responsibility?
In the Liberian tradition, Thanksgiving is not a celebration of abundance. It is, instead, a recognition of survival. Our nation has endured civil wars, military coups, plagues of corruption, economic stagnation, and repeated political tension. We have lived through health epidemics, from measles outbreaks to Ebola. We have seen fire and flood, hunger and hardship. And still, Liberia remains. This resilience has been neither accidental nor evenly borne. It has been shouldered, overwhelmingly, by ordinary Liberians: the market woman selling under the rain, the schoolteacher underpaid yet unwavering, the farmer who feeds communities with little credit, the informal worker who survives daily uncertainty, and the families who struggle to pay fees to keep their children in school.
When we speak of giving thanks, we must be honest: the survival of this nation has rested on the backs of those who receive the least benefit from it.
This is where Thanksgiving becomes complex. Gratitude, if genuine, is not just an emotion; it is a moral obligation. It requires us to examine whether our nation’s institutions, leadership, and systems honor the sacrifices made by its people. And it calls on us to look in the mirror and face the ways we fall short.
We thank God for peace, but true peace means more than the absence of gunfire. Peace requires fairness, access, dignity, and opportunity. It is hollow to speak of peace while poverty deepens and inequality expands. It is insufficient to commemorate God’s mercy while young people graduate into unemployment and idleness. It is insincere to praise national unity while political discourse grows increasingly contemptuous, tribal sentiments resurface, and public trust erodes.
Thanksgiving should not be a day of national self-congratulation. It should be a day of collective accountability.
This accountability extends to those who lead. For public officials, gratitude must translate into stewardship. Leadership in Liberia cannot continue to be treated as a personal entitlement. The offices of government are instruments of service, not vehicles for enrichment or prestige. If we are to give thanks truthfully, then the President, ministers, lawmakers, and county leaders must demonstrate a posture of humility and transparency. They must remember that authority is temporary, that power is borrowed, and that the nation will judge not their speeches, but their choices.
However, responsibility does not rest solely with the government. Citizens must also face their own reflection. We cannot condemn corruption publicly while privately celebrating those who exploit their positions because they are our relatives, tribesmates, or benefactors. We cannot criticize poor governance during the day and then vote at night based on rice distributions, favors, and personal loyalty. We cannot ask God for national transformation while refusing to change our own habits of silence, complacency, and political convenience.
Thanksgiving calls the nation to maturity.
It is not enough to say we are grateful. Gratitude must take shape in how we build schools that are functional, not only constructed. It must appear in how we protect state resources from theft. It must animate decisions about how budgets are spent and whose welfare is prioritized. It must influence how communities resolve disputes without violence. It must shape how we treat one another in taxis, on market roads, in classrooms, in public offices, online, and in the quiet corners of everyday life.
This moment in Liberia’s history is fragile. The demands on the state are enormous. Expectations of change remain high. Yet cynicism grows quickly, and trust is brittle. If Thanksgiving means anything, it should remind us that hope cannot survive on rhetoric alone. It must be nourished by policy grounded in justice, leadership oriented toward public good, and citizenship that refuses to trade its dignity for temporary rewards.
We should give thanks, but we should not mistake endurance for progress. Survival is not the final goal of a nation. Flourishing is. Liberation is. Dignity is.
The best way Liberia can show gratitude now is by working together sincerely to build a fairer society. A country where opportunity isn’t based on family name or political connections. A country where public offices serve the people. A country where our children inherit hope, not hardship.
Thanksgiving shouldn’t end with the closing prayer. If it does, it’s nothing more than empty ceremony.
True gratitude demands transformation. It demands that we match our prayers with purpose, our worship with work, and our thanksgiving with truth.
Only then will Liberia not merely endure, but finally rise into the nation it was always meant to be.
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