Many of us view the American Thanksgiving celebration with scepticism and dread. Another example of the US stealthily exporting their celebrations via TV, film and the Internet. A holiday that is filled with excesses of food and drink, that nowadays seems to be built around a packed tv sporting schedule and has become a day of relaxation and gluttony before you hit the shops for the Black Friday sales.
During the last 30 years, we've seen the growth of Halloween celebrations, every year it seems bigger and ever more like the spectacle we've grown accustomed to, the one that's been served up to us each year on all our favourite tv shows. This was followed in recent years by Black Friday. I'm sure we all remember seeing the news coverage of members of the British public fighting in stores over tv's etc. Thankfully, these shocking scenes resulted in a number of stores scaling back Black Friday in the last couple of years. This year with all the Covid restrictions, stores have extended Black Friday to incorporate a whole month, taking the opportunity to try and bring in desperately needed money to try and make up for their terrible sales results from the rest of the year, but this has mainly been restricted to online.
Maybe, just maybe, the Thanksgiving celebration is the one American export that we should be welcoming with open arms. I think that the idea of sitting down with family and friends, and celebrating all the things that we should be thankful for is a great idea. It's something that should impact our view of life and how we treat those around us and further afield, and how we view and treat the world around us. It could help to change the view of many of us from being 'a glass half empty' type of person to 'a glass half full'.
How could one day a year change people's attitude? On it's own it can't, if it's just one day a year it will just morph into a ritual and the other elements i.e. the food, will rise to the fore. But if it could get us to start thinking about all the things that we should be thankful for on a daily basis and more importantly who we should be thankful to. We could start with being thankful for the fact that we've woken this morning, for our clothes, for our homes, the food in our cupboards, our family and friends, our jobs, the weather (both the sun and rain are needed for growing crops). I'm sure that once you start thinking, you could create a list that would seem never ending. At first it will feel contrived and not at all sincere, but if you persevere, it will become easier and you will eventually find that it becomes second nature. Think about how we train our young children, from a very early age we constantly encourage them to say those magic words, 'please' and 'thank you'. It sometimes seems like an uphill struggle, but the constant repetition forms a habit for a lifetime and instills in them an attitude of gratitude and consideration.
We often interpret the word blessing in the bible to indicate bestowing favour on someone, when instead it's most often used in relation to God. In the Psalms, David often uses the phrase "Bless the Lord", to bless God is to praise him and acknowledge him as the source of all blessings. That obviously is another way of giving thanks! Maybe we could learn something from our Jewish cousins in their tradition of blessings, they have set one line blessings for every part of the day and every circumstance. Is this what Paul was referring to in various of his books, particularly in 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 "...Pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances...."? In which case, rather than celebrating Thanksgiving Day, maybe we should be looking to celebrate Thanksgiving Daily/Continually!
Read our blog