Thanksgiving...Everyday

While we should take some time to consider our history and remember with gratitude all that we have come through as a nation, Thanksgiving is also a good time to be thankful for coming through personal difficulties.

As we evaluate just how much we have to be thankful for each and every day we can do some forward thinking for making the future better, better for ourselves and better for others where we can.

Before considering why Americans have a Thanksgiving holiday (take a sweeping look at why at the end of this hub), here is something from a personal level to open the post with a bit of perspective.

Not long ago my husband and I skipped the actual day. We had traveled beforehand in order to be with one side of the family, then came down with a little bug on Thanksgiving Day.

All in all, we were okay with that because our children were scattered across the country and it would have been rather lonely at the table, just the two of us sitting, looking at the big bird together.

However, in thinking it all over we made a mutual decision to, if our children are away, invite friends or maybe even strangers to join us, but all things considered, skipping the day of Thanksgiving was best that year.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving we were well again so my multi-talented husband went to work on his yearly project. Spending a day smoking a couple of turkeys is one of his favorite contributions to the holidays.

It was quite chilly for a southern day, but he was able to get them done in plenty of time for us to cool and debone them, get the drippings ready for future use, store most of the meat in the freezer, and make ourselves a lovely meal to celebrate feeling better.

We enjoyed a nice, quiet candlelight dinner together while we made plans for the future, including reorganizing some aspects of life and stepping up our exercise program. It was like an early New Year's resolution making event. Times of R&R are such a blessing!

The interesting thing about missing the actual Thanksgiving was the feeling of missing out on something much bigger than a family meal. By choosing to postpone our celebration we spent that Thursday feeling oddly apart from the rest of our country.

It is a special day for our nation, this day called Thanksgiving. It's both a national treasure and a personal gift. A time to remember, a time pray, a time to enjoy our blessings, and a time to examine where we've come from and how best to go forward.

No matter what our particular traditions might be--family, football, friends--Thanksgiving Day for Americans is still about remembering God’s provision to the very first settlers through the national Indians and through the bountiful crops, fish, and game of this land.

Now, it is a day for giving thanks for His continued provision in this country, especially for the freedom to worship. All Americans have much to be grateful for because this history is rich with evidence of God’s blessing on our nation in spite of the fact that we have so often ignored Him and taken His mercy for granted.

Although the way it is celebrated in our day and time varies greatly from those early celebrations, the truth of why we have an American Thanksgiving Day has not changed. Revisionists have worked to denigrate the early settlers and the founding fathers, and they are even trying to eliminate the traditional Thanksgiving Day, but we still live in America.

Even though our meal was on hold I did try to shop for a few last minute Thanksgiving decorations that year. In store after store I was given the same story--very few Thanksgiving items were available to customers.

There were plenty for Oct. 31, and Christmas had been available since August, but no one seemed to know what had happened to the Thanksgiving decorations. As consumers we should ask for next year’s Thanksgiving items now, and as Americans we need to talk up Thanksgiving in our neighborhoods and schools.

It’s our job to teach our American history to new generations. We can retake rationale from those who would destroy our foundations, and we can show young people how they can do the same. We can get involved in education and elections. We can become a part of our local governments.

Unlike people in many countries around the world, we have specific reasons to appreciate our Thanksgiving Day throughout the year. It’s up to us as Americans to hold on to the history behind our national holidays like Thanksgiving by helping each other remember that we have much to be thankful for everyday. The question is, will we?

Generally, people understand the value of maintaining a grateful spirit once they think it through, and reading up on the topic of random kindnesses is a neat way to expand our knowledge on how to not only help those in need, but to inspire others to do the same.

That a special time to focus on having an attitude of gratitude comes to us once a year certainly helps us all in those areas, but the roots of America's Thanksgiving Day are unique to our country and important to hold on to. Its beginning was long before the early Europeans began settling on these shores.

The foolishness of romanticizing the causes of the Pilgrims and Puritans becomes evident for anyone who does a serious study of what they faced, of what caused them to seek out a new place to live in freedom, and of how their lives worked out once they established a new home on this soil.

Like ourselves, they were caught in their times. Caught in the consequences of Luther's early 1500s challenge to a church government that had become powerfully corrupt and trapped in the web of that corruption's changing political face, they worked to promote truth and freedom for all. They worked against a class system that kept common people in bondage.

Names like Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, and Huss still ring an amazing tune called The Reformation throughout world history. The movement's song bravely stood against changeful monarchies which enlisted the help of notorious names like Alva and their deadly inquisitions.

The results of that history's phases had imperfections. They were filled with imperfect people. Yet, the struggles from the 1500s through the 1700s were a process that led to the founding of our country. As shaky a beginning as it was, this country grew strong from that foundation.

Founders writings still warn us about the dangers of disregarding the concepts that were dissected and argued over so our Constitution could be established. Though we are now seeing erosion of Constitutional rights (for example, the loss of protection from government over reach into our lives due to the branches of our government losing oversight of each other's actions), we still live in a Republic and there is hope of regaining ground that has been lost.

Efforts to create a more powerful political class system than history brings to mind are at work against freedom here and throughout the world. For all the mocking of those who came here and those who established this Republic's government, we can credit much knowledge and many benefits to their courageous leadership.

Those benefits have reached around the world and they continue to fight oppressions against various people groups. Examples include how soberingly shocking to our advanced sensibilities it is to take an honest look at how other cultures actually treat their women and children. It's a sad study for another day, but it is a real life example of why we as Americans have good reason to be thankful everyday for our heritage, even if one does not believe exactly like the Pilgrims or Puritans did.