What visions does this word conjure up in your mind when you hear it? Do you think of family and friends gathered for a feast of turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and all the other accoutrements? Perhaps you remember your grade school history lessons of pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a peaceable feast? But let’s face it – the first thing we think about is food… and probably football!
If you live in a small town there is probably an ecumenical service on Wednesday night in which all the churches participate. Most of the time the service is rotated yearly so that each church has the opportunity to host the service. Also, most of the time there is a choir composed of people from each of the churches who have been practicing together for weeks. This coming together provides people the opportunity to give thanks as a group.
Traditionally, Thanksgiving heralds the start of the ‘holiday season’. But now that Christmas shopping starts before Halloween, where does this leave Thanksgiving? Just like we lose the reason for the Christmas season I believe we lose the purpose of Thanksgiving. As great as the food is and the joy of family celebrating together, Thanksgiving is a time to stop, consider, and give thanks. We should stop and remember and rejoice in the blessings we have received this past year.
We need to remember our forefathers who came to this land so that they could be free and safe. These men and women gave up all their comforts to venture toward a land they’d never seen and conditions they did not know. And once they were here one of their first acts was to stop and give thanks and celebrated with the people already here. We should remember this. And we should also give thanks to those men and women who are, today, standing as a line of defense protecting our freedoms.
Thanksgiving is important and being thankful is critical.
