Every year Americans gather on the fourth Thursday of November to give thanks for a land of plenty and a year of blessings. What if Americans truly gave thanks to God for their blessings? Could it make a difference for the future?
by Darris McNeely
Last month my wife and I made a trip to Canada and spent a week with friends in Newfoundland. As we were leaving, Canada was about to celebrate its national day of Thanksgiving. Theirs falls a little more than a month before we celebrate ours in the United States. I felt like staying over another day just to celebrate with our friends, but home called me back.
I have always been in love with the American Thanksgiving. As the fall season comes to a close and a nation gathers for a celebratory meal with family and friends, the romantic within me is unleashed. For a day I can imagine a land and its people turning their faces to God—all in their own way acknowledging something larger, more expansive, than the narrow confines of daily life.
Sometime in my youth I saw an old Currier and Ives engraving of a New England farmhouse with smoke curling out of its chimney. Lights were on inside, and people were arriving in buggies all laden down with baskets of food. Was it a homecoming? Were children coming home to Grandma's house?
I would put myself into that picture and desire the same for my family. For a time in my youth we did go to Grandma's home on Thanksgiving and gather with our large family of cousins, aunts and uncles for a day of feasting. My wife and I have tried through the years to keep this tradition going in our growing family by gathering with our parents and bringing along the children and grandchildren. It gets harder as the years go by, but we make every effort to gather on this day.
History and hope
The origins of the day are well known. The first year in the new world for pilgrim settlers in New England was rough, and they gathered with Native Americans to have a meal and give thanks. Later, it became customary for nearly every U.S. president to call for an annual day of thanksgiving. The proclamations began with George Washington. But it was during Franklin Roosevelt's second term that the fourth Thursday in November was fixed as the national day of Thanksgiving.
