The forgotten holiday

It crept up on me. Seems like we were just celebrating Independence Day, in the sweltering heat, and now, the weather has changed and we are looking at celebrating Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that just seems to get overlooked. I really noticed this when I went to the store to try to find my newly married daughter some Thanksgiving Holiday décor to decorate her new home with. What I discovered on my trip to the store was an aisle of seriously raked over clearance items from Halloween and aisles and aisles of Christmas décor.

Where is Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is that holiday that is slowly becoming less thought of in the minds of Americans. Use to be, that Thanksgiving was the time we all gathered at Grandma’s house and we all participated in the cooking and the festivities. Spending all day long around the dinner table, talking, laughing, reminiscing and just being thankful for another day, another year, just another family gathering. But now, it seems we can barely get the food on the table and we are already talking about what time the game comes on, or we are spreading out the sale ads and putting together our black Friday shopping list for later that night. A few years ago, my friend even took Thanksgiving dinner to the hunting cabin where her boys and husband were because hunting was their priority.

Somehow, our perception of Thanksgiving Day has gone haywire. Have we forgotten what the reason was for that first Thanksgiving?

All my life, I have thought about that first Thanksgiving feast between the Pilgrims and Indians, putting so much thought into the “feast”. But if you really think about it, and read the history, you will find that the Pilgrims had actually been in America for alittle less than a year (1621) but during those short months of being on American soil they struggled. They struggled hard, over half of their population died from either disease or starvation. The Pilgrims did not host that first feast to try out new recipes, they held that feast to celebrate life with their Indian friends and to give thanks to God for His provision in their difficult times.

I don’t know about you, but I’d kind of like to see Americans get back to that first original thought. Too many people are fighting thru difficult times with financial difficulties, cancer, death of loved ones, fear of terrorist attacks, loss of jobs and infertility, to name a few. This year, I am determined to make Thanksgiving an important holiday, to not let my mind be swayed with other things, just to be about my family and about giving thanks to God for another day, another year, just another family gathering.

Who knows, for some of us, this could be our last feast with someone that we love. Why ruin it with a football game or getting the $20 television at Wal-Mart? If you would like to join me in making your Thanksgiving different this year, try doing a few of these over the next week:

1. Write out Bible verses about the attributes of God, place them in a basket or a cornucopia on the table. Each day for the next week, draw out a verse to be read during your family meal.
2. Instead of focusing on gratitude, listen for ingratitude. For the next week, have a money jar on the counter, for each time you hear a family member complain about something, have them put money in the jar. By the end of the week, you might have enough money to buy a homeless person a meal or put in the offering on Sunday for a missionary.
3. Think of someone this week that you know is far away from their family or will spend Thanksgiving alone, go visit them, take them a pie or send them a card to let them know you are thinking about them and praying for them.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 118:29)

Let’s put thanks (and God) back into Thanksgiving. It starts with one heart at a time.

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