I don’t do Thanksgiving well.

Don’t get me wrong.  On this day the American society sets aside to give thanks I can “do up” the day.  I spent much of it joyfully cooking up the feast for my family.  It is a day I can relax and do something I enjoy that I don’t normally have time to do.  (And Saturday I will defend my Dutch Oven cobbler championship, but that’s another story.)

But in the grand scheme of things I think I have problems with the complexity of the day.  I know it’s not supposed to be complex, its supposed to be simple – a day set aside to give thanks to God for His grace, mercy, provision and blessings. But every year it seems that some new layer of complexity is added to the day – usually in the form of something that has to do with the next season starting earlier and earlier.

So, among the complexities that I personally struggle with are:

• Thanksgiving has become one of the high-holy days of American culture. (The good part here is that while commercialization for the next holiday season encroaches on, or even infringes on, the day, Thanksgiving has still mostly escaped commercial influences.)
• By virtue of being part of our cultural narrative the holiday has been shaped by the culture.  With schools avoiding religion who do students think the Pilgrims were thankful to?  Only the indigenous people – the context of divine provision has been eliminated.
• While one particular narrative is the one American culture celebrates today, my time living in New Mexico raised my awareness of other narratives, including earlier events.
• Modern American culture has standardized on the one narrative, but earlier in American history a day of thanksgiving could be declared by civil governments at various times in response to some important event, including military victories.  (And likewise, days of prayer and fasting were declared in times of need.) While there was the tradition of Thanksgiving in the fall as a harvest festival, there was still a sense of cause and effect, or call and response rather than a date that could be placed on the calendar a decade in advance. (That is of course still acknowledging the Biblical parallel Feast of Sukkot which was part harvest festival which was also tied to a specific day on the calendar, Tishri 15.)
• And finally, I probably dread and fear the sharp transition from a day of giving thanks to the mass celebration of materialism that the day following Thanksgiving has become.

So, since I don’t do Thanksgiving well I want to give you stories from two people who do.  These are both about thanksgiving when that seems like the last thing a person would be inclined to do.

The first is from pastor Mark D. Roberts who has a couple of very good Thanksgiving reflections on his blog.  But I want to highlight the story of pastor Martin Rinkart.  Rinkart ministered in Germany during the very difficult and devastating period of the Thirty Years War, but also wrote the hymn “Now Thank We All Our God,” a hymn that is now almost exclusively associated with Thanksgiving in our worship.

The second one if from elder Jody Harrington and her wonderful blog Quotidian Grace .  (And I take the time to plug hers since she has the job at Presbyterians Today of plugging everyone else’s blogs and should get some recognition as a blogger in her own right.)  As a nice antidote to Black Friday she has a post today about Bless Friday, but I wanted to highlight her previous post about “Thankfulness with a Heavy Heart.”

So I hope all my American readers had a good day of giving thanks and to all of you, wherever you may be, may we remember daily to whom we owe the greatest thanks.