Some Thoughts on Thanksgiving

I'll just come out and say it...

the entire premise behind the holiday of Thanksgiving bothers me just a tad. It's the same logic behind Valentine's Day--deliberately show candied affection for your significant other on that one day out of the year, just in case you don't during the other 364. So, with Thanksgiving, it feels like we are supposed to deliberately show thanks this one day out of the year, just in case we're terrible at it the other 364. Then again, Thanksgiving can trace its roots back to the Puritan pilgrims. Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday through-and-through.

But because of that little buggering concern, you will probably never see me give a Thanksgiving-themed sermon entitled "How to Have an Attitude of Gratitude." Though, in fairness, that is also partly because I feel like a sermon with that title is something that you are much likely to see Joel Osteen give, or maybe Jim Bakker before his fall from grace.

Yet if Thanksgiving isn't a one-shot opportunity to cram our giving of thanks into one turkey-laden day, then what can we make it into? Right now, the cliche is that it is an excuse for us to eat dinner with people who annoy us and then watch football. Cliches exist for a reason--there is usually at least a germ of truth in them. But in being more deliberate about the relational aspects of a holiday like this--after all, thanks has to have a recipient, we can't really just give thanks to ourselves and expect that to do--can work wonders.

So, in a way, it is my upcoming Advent sermon series writ large--just as we may stray from the authentic meaning of Christmas, so too do we stray from the authentic meaning of Thanksgiving. But, in preparing for this sermon series, what this preacher has learned is that this most certainly does not mean that any holiday, no matter what its side effects, is beyond redemption.

Yours in Christ,
Eric

PS: Please do yourselves, and the world, a giant favor and not actually go shopping on Black Friday. Use that time to cultivate relationships with people who you may otherwise have little time and energy to talk to because of work, distance, and the like--after all, Black Friday has become a de facto holiday here. With that said, a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours tomorrow!