Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, one that I’m determined not to allow our culture to hijack or separate from its faith-based roots. It has already happened with other Christian holidays—Christ’s resurrection has been replaced by chocolate bunnies and eggs, Christmas by Santa Claus and consumerism. Thanksgiving is quickly becoming a day to overindulge, watch football, and shop for bargains.
But the roots of Thanksgiving, like Christmas and Easter, are biblical. The Pilgrims got the idea for a harvest celebration from the Old Testament Feast of Tabernacles—in spite of what my daughter’s eighth grade social studies book said. The text never mentioned God and said that the Pilgrims were thanking the Indians! When Abraham Lincoln began our modern-day celebration in 1863 it was as a religious holiday. He declared that the U.S. should observe “a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
I decided to consult the same source as the Pilgrims for my family’s Thanksgiving celebration. Deuteronomy 16:13-15 says: “Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress.” Feasting for seven days may not be realistic but one day isn’t nearly long enough to thank God for all my blessings—chief among them, my salvation. We try to make the long weekend a time of rest from the busyness and craziness of life, setting aside time to enjoy the people around us, and to thank God for the blessings of the past year.
“Be joyful at your feast—” Joyful! Thanksgiving isn’t the time to nurse grudges and old wounds, it’s the time for a brand new start. A few days before the Feast of Tabernacles, God’s people knelt before Him on Yom Kippur and thoroughly examined their lives, confessing their sins and asking for forgiveness. And before daring to approach Him, they were commanded to mend any broken relationships and seek forgiveness from those they’ve harmed—and to extend forgiveness to those who asked. Imagine how joyful Thanksgiving Day would be if we celebrated it with a clean slate—a new beginning with God and with each other.
“…you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.” While I don’t have any maidservants (sigh), it’s a tradition in our family to invite people who are far from home or without family to feast with us. My husband and I started this tradition when we were “aliens” ourselves, living in South America. We invited a dozen expatriate friends to join us for Thanksgiving—and every year since then, our meal hasn’t been complete without the “aliens, fatherless and widows” at our table.
“For seven days celebrate the feast to the Lord your God . . .” I never want to forget that this is a feast dedicated to praising and thanking God. I love it that our church has a Thanksgiving Day worship service. God is at the center of our day, not the turkey. Our family also spends time around the table talking about our faith and our faithful God.
“For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands . . .” It’s interesting that Abraham Lincoln instituted Thanksgiving in the middle of the Civil War, a time of enormous hardship in our nation. I try to remember that God can bring blessings from our hardest trials, whether our “harvest” is big or small. The most painful times in my life were when I’ve drawn the closest to Him.
“…and your joy will be complete.” Joy! Complete—with nothing lacking. Our lives will overflow with joy when we take time to express our gratitude to our God, the source of all our blessings.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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“I never want to forget that this is a feast dedicated to praising and thanking God.” Amen! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, too. I so enjoyed seeing pictures of your feast, Lynn.
It was a feast, too! I hope you had a great day, too.
Your remarks are right on! We also love celebrating with the “orphans” in our midst. Over the years the orphans become “family” and we need to add a few more each year. 🙂 God has been so good to us by supplying all of our needs and wants.
That’s true for us, too. Our “orphans” and “aliens” also became family. I hope your day of celebration was wonderful.
My thought this year was that Halloween and Christmas have grown together and sandwiched Thanksgiving into to nothing. It is very grieving. This was always our big family holiday and God was always the center. And we often invited the elderly who were alone to come and eat with us and enjoy our family time with us. We have a no TV zone day -it is all family and a time around the table for everyone to tell what they are the most thankful for that year. We have so much to be thankful for.
You’re right about Halloween growing into Christmas. And Thanksgiving is all about “Black Friday” now. So sad! We also have a no TV day as we count our blessings. I hope your day was wonderful.
I think if the pilgrims could see how Thanksgiving is celebrated today they wouldn’t recognize the holiday. They’d think it was a football holiday or that employers let their employees off work for a national holiday to go shopping for Christmas.
It wasn’t so long ago that employees got the holiday off so they could celebrate with their families. We still had Black Friday but it was on Friday not Thursday.
Then department stores began opening at 6pm on Thanksgiving Day. They got away with it because we let them. My daughter refused to take advantage of the big offers in the paper for Thursday. She said it wasn’t fair to try to snuff out Thanksgiving. So she waited till Black Friday actually came and then shopped.
I usually do not put a tree up till after Thanksgiving. I think today people try to rush Christmas too quickly. Then when it’s time for Christmas day they can’t wait to get their trees down and get things back to normal. Does this make sense?
Blessings
Shirley
Your daughter is so right. And this rush, rush attitude makes absolutely NO sense. The real meaning of all our Christian holidays are being lost. We need to all band together to claim them back! Isn’t it interesting that no one has tried to commercialize Jewish holidays like Passover or even Muslim holidays like Ramadan? Why do we let them steal ours?
Amen! I appreciate your reference to the Old Testament as well as to Abraham Lincoln. Yes, what an amazing thing that right in the middle of war, he would think about being thankful. Thank God he did think of it! Our Pastor told about Abraham Lincoln also when talking about Thanksgiving.
This year, perhaps for the first time, I had Thanksgiving in my heart for about a week before it got here. God is just so good to me! I just kept thinking of so many blessings and it has been amazing. As a Christian, I have so much to be thankful for. Thank you for all that you shared this year with your readers. May God bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you and give you peace.