"We Gather Together" is a Thanksgiving standard in many American churches, but it began as a Dutch song. Adrianus Valerius is credited with writing it in 1597 as "Wilt heden nu treden," to celebrate a Dutch victory over Spanish forces. The Thanksgiving connection came about 300 years later.
The victory it commemorates was the Battle of Turnhout, where a Dutch army under Prince Maurice of Orange defeated Spanish occupying forces. The song mattered because the Dutch were in a war of liberation against Spain's King Philip II, and Dutch Protestants had been forbidden to worship together. The title phrase "wilt heden nu treden" is loosely rendered as "we gather together."
The hymn took its modern shape in the 19th century. In 1877, Austrian composer Eduard Kremser published an arrangement of the song, and the tune is still called Kremser. American music scholar Theodore Baker met the hymn in a German translation while studying in Leipzig, then translated it into English in 1894 under the title "Prayer of Thanksgiving."
That translation gave the hymn its Thanksgiving identity. Denominations began adding it to their hymnbooks in the early 1900s, and it is often sung at American churches the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
For Christians, the story carries a simple point. Believers once risked punishment just to worship together, which gives new weight to the New Testament call in Hebrews 10:25 not to give up meeting together. With Thanksgiving falling on Nov. 26 this year, the hymn is a reminder that gathering to give thanks was once a hard-won freedom.
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