Where’s the Thanks in Thanksgiving?

“There’s nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor...that it was from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 2:24

Thanksgiving…the very concept conjures up evocative nostalgia. A silent bell tolls in our hearts, reviving the pilgrim spirit inherited from the Plymouth Plantation. Tradition is dusted off, Norman Rockwell is resurrected and a 24-hour moratorium is placed on familial grievances.

The vast migration has begun. About 49 million Americans are making the pilgrimage ‘home’ to extended families. Roads and airports are clogged, folks in a hurry, tempers short, children exhausted, courtesies abandoned. Most will arrive in time, descending on the old home place and thinking of Thanksgiving dinner.

This year’s harvest is in. Most have no sweat equity in it. Toil? Really? It’s too easy to purchase the fruits of another’s labor. In fact, harvests of today bear little resemblance to harvests of a bygone era.

Few recall the days when mules were tractors, the days of smokehouse hams and sausages, syrup making, pumpkin gathering and sweet potato banks. Days of crisp air and frosty grass; days before irrigation, genetic seeds and labels that read, “Imported.”

Former harvests were unpredictable, subject to the vicissitudes of nature and insects, and thick with the sweat of hard labor. In those days serious supplications were made for Divine favor, unlike the easy platitudes now uttered.

The term ‘harvest’ has lost its strength. Our collective hands are soft, no blisters. Our fingers do the walking, our tongues do the talking. Cash is our reaping scythe.

At Plymouth Plantation, 1621, the harvest was hard-earned from the hard scrabble earth. The community pooled their resources and labor to eke out a survival. ‘Thanksgiving’ meant gratitude then. It was not a secular ‘Black Friday’ event like today’s pagan harvest festival. It was a genuine thanksgiving to the Creator for the land’s bounty. Can you imagine yourself there?

Indigenous natives arrived at the celebration with an abundance of turnips, corn and fish. By noon the village was assembled, thanks given to the Almighty for the bounty of another year, and the feast began. It lasted for days. Feasts are always more enjoyable with a crowd.

Today, we are largely indifferent to the idea of a communal Thanksgiving. Churches and charities do their best to feed the hungry, which does represent in a small way the essence of our collective spirit. We’re a nation of individuals, gathering with friends and family in smaller settings. We remain segregated from the egalitarian life of our communities. Consequently, we fail to reap their intrinsic strengths.

Notwithstanding, Thanksgiving remains a warm celebration of congeniality and reunion, and a time of remembrance. Yes, to remember the ‘old days,’ to say a silent prayer for the ‘empty chairs’ at our tables, and remember fondly those who have moved on and the new ones now in high chairs. We remember happy times; we laugh, and maybe even cry a little.

Thanksgivings would be incomplete without the often comedic dysfunctional aspects of family homecomings. After a few days of ‘catching up,’ and with everyone sick of turkey and dressing, and often each other, the party breaks up and the crowd heads home.

With packed cars, abundant hugs and turkey sandwiches to go, the weary pilgrims depart and join the returning throngs, cursing the traffic and vowing never to do it again…until next year, that is.

Now ‘next year’ has arrived, and the tradition of Thanksgiving is revived in our hearts. We’ll celebrate another harvest in this land of abundance, an incomprehensible gift of grace from the beneficent hand of God.

As we gather around our tables Thursday, let’s remember to thank the Source of all blessings. Remember to thank those in other lands who protect our liberties and for those who have given their last measure of devotion for our freedoms.

May your Thanksgiving harvest fill your cornucopia to overflowing with abundance.


Bud Hearn
November 24, 2015