Thanksgiving or Thanks Giving

I’m writing this on the day after Thanksgiving while sitting in the sunroom at my brother’s home. Twenty-one members of my extended family gathered around a table yesterday and enjoyed a bountiful meal prepared by my sister-in-law. The group spanned three generations, my own being the oldest. After a year and a half of COVID-19 social distancing and isolation, we were happy to be able to gather. I’m sure many other families were feeling the same way. It was a REAL Thanksgiving moment.

Already, our world has moved on to Black Friday, a day identified with deep discounts and shameless bargain hunting. It’s one of the biggest shopping days of the year, a day merchants often depend on to meet annual quotas. How quickly we’ve moved from being thankful to looking for more. What happened to being grateful for what we already have? Shouldn’t Thanksgiving be more than a day?

My Christian faith is rooted in giving for others, starting with the self-giving act of Jesus for his friends and the world, not only in his death but perhaps even more so in his life. He ate in the home of tax collectors and Pharisees. He allowed a prostitute to anoint his feet with oil and wipe his feet with her hair. He put himself at risk by refusing to condemn a woman caught in adultery when a crowd wanted to stone her. He seemed always to be challenging the social norms of his day, particularly if they disadvantaged those who were deemed socially unacceptable. He “gave thanks” for everyone. He seemed to embody gratitude for the relationships and the people he encountered, even those who brought him up short and forced him to look at things in a different way. I struggle with following his example, and yet I believe that we can also embody “thanks giving”.

What would the world be like if we could be a “thanks giving” for the world, for everyone we meet? What would it mean politically if the we thought in terms of “thanks giving” for the disadvantaged in our communities and our nation instead of entitlement or gaming the system? How might our communities flourish if “getting for” gave in to “giving for”? What if?

My hope is that everyone had something to celebrate this Thanksgiving, especially relationships that have nurtured and sustained you through this pandemic. My prayer is that we can all carry that “thanks giving” forward in our every day lives, feeling gratitude for all that is good … and working to be sure that others have a share in it as well.