What makes Thanksgiving difficult for you this year? Are you dealing with grief over the loss of a loved one? Challenges in your health, family, or finances? Guilt over the past or fear of the future? In collating gratitude with suffering, we have four logical options we can view as a Thanksgiving spectrum.
As our society continues its post-Christian slide into secularism, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas have become secularized as well. One can go the entire Christmas season without seeing a mention of Christ’s birth in secular culture; Thanksgiving has become far less about gratitude to God and far more about football and feasting. Thus we should not be surprised when even gratitude becomes generically secularized. But we should not overlook the illogic of this trajectory nor the power of thanksgiving when it is properly directed.
This week, we’re discovering reasons for genuine thanksgiving. Not a generic sense of gratitude such as secular Americans may briefly feel tomorrow, but a true lifestyle of praise and thanks to the God who is our Father.
Scripture calls us to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). We are to “give” thanks, not “feel” thanks. The holiday is Thanksgiving, not Thanksfeeling.
President Trump pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey yesterday, continuing a long and surprising tradition.
Such clemency apparently began with President Lincoln in 1863. Two years later, a White House reporter noted that “a live turkey had been brought home for the Christmas dinner.” However, Lincoln’s son Tad “interceded in behalf of its life . . . [his] plea was admitted and the turkey’s life spared.”
