It’s the most wonderful time of the year, the world tells me. Christmastime is here. Yes, of course, there’s that Thanksgiving Day, but go ahead and set up your Christmas tree and deck the halls.
I am 24 years old; thus, my life experience only goes back so far. But I seem to remember a time when the Christmas celebration waited until Thanksgiving had come and gone. In fact, I remember a time when it waited until December started and the 25 days of Christmas began.
Things have seemed to change over the past two decades, however, and the ultimate season has arrived seemingly earlier and earlier each year. I know for certain that this cannot possibly be the case for the last 2,000 years of human history, as rationally there are only so many days it can move up. Although this year it broke the long-thought unassailable Thanksgiving barrier (perhaps by 2030, it will be knocking on Halloween’s door.)
I’m as guilty as anyone. My wife and I set up the tree on the second weekend of November. “The Year Without a Santa Claus” begs to be remade as “The Year Without a Thanksgiving.” The eventual remake of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” will be set in a snowy December. I’m getting carried away now, but you understand.
Growing up, I have always loved Thanksgiving. I love having a day to watch football and spend time with family, as well as the food, of course. I appreciate all that the holiday brings.
However, do I appreciate what the holiday means? Ironically, that seems to be the clear message of the holiday. Traditionally speaking, the first Thanksgiving in our country was held in 1621, as roughly 150 colonists and Wampanoag natives joined together for a three-day feast to celebrate a good harvest. Throughout the 17th century and in the centuries that followed, days of thanksgiving were regularly held in November to celebrate harvests and military victories. President George Washington declared Thursday, Nov. 26, a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer,” thanking God for the new nation’s Constitution, peace and prosperity. President Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, a call to pause and give thanks amid bloodshed. Finally, in 1941, it became a fixed civic holiday, annually the fourth Thursday in November, celebrating family, community and gratitude.
A remarkable history for a day worth celebrating each year. Thanksgiving is a more than worthwhile holiday, deserving of much more than just a three-day weekend in late November, sandwiched by Christmas celebrations. I’m not alone in this; it is fascinating to see humans over our nation’s history recognize the innate goodness of thankfulness. (There is no official Selfishness Day, after all.)
This understood positive value of thankfulness is deeply instilled and taught to us by our Creator. It is implied in the very meaning of thanks: to honor the giver of the gift you have received.
For mankind was designed with thankfulness in mind; the Christian believes that our ultimate purpose, the goal of each day accompanied by the rising sun, is to glorify and enjoy our Creator, giving thanks to the Lord for all the goodness in our lives.
That is Thanksgiving.
C.S. Lewis wrote that he “had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously turns into praise...the world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers the countryside... I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”
Sounds simple enough.
But that is not the end of Thanksgiving. Think back to the history of the holiday: the pilgrims feasted after 50 percent of their colony had perished; Washington gave thanks after eight years of Revolutionary War; Lincoln called a divided nation to pause in the middle of the bloody Civil War to give thanks for all the blessings in this battered nation. Even in 1941, the civic holiday officially set in stone came amidst the global horrors of the Second World War. Yet gratitude still resided in the hearts of men; thankfulness, time and time again, was determined to be a necessary and intentional expression.
That is Thanksgiving today, amidst our continuing lives in a decidedly broken world. But what could possibly provide reason to praise the Creator despite living in a world of bombings and murders, wars and despair?
There must be hope. It is not by accident that Thanksgiving so closely precedes and relates to Christmas, the time of giving (freely) and receiving (even more freely.)
For with Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the perfect God into this imperfect world, where the Son endured every trial and tribulation that man could ever know and more.
Jesus lived a perfect life, flawlessly obedient and thankful to the Father, and voluntarily submitted himself to the cross, where he died the most excruciating death for the sins of the world, past and present. By the shedding of His perfect blood, through infinite grace and mercy, conquering death and sin, we now might be spared from the natural cost of our wickedness, so that we might have life in Him: “creations in an eternal posture of praise to the Creator, rebels in an eternal posture of gratitude to the Redeemer.”
The existence of Christmas necessitates the existence of Thanksgiving. The faithfulness of God, our Creator, is infinitely illustrated in our lives, but in no way greater than this.
That is Thanksgiving, eternally.
May we never skip over Thanksgiving, may we never get over the sacrifice on the cross for each and every one of us and may we praise God for the eternal abundance of blessings in our lives, always as though every day is Thanksgiving.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Happy Thanksgiving, Journal-News reader.
