This week I thought that I would discover more about Thanksgiving Day as it is held on Thursday November 26th in United States and Canada and share it with you. It is a national holiday and celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modelled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people. This holiday is particularly rich in legend and symbolism, and the traditional fare of the Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.
A writer called Bradford wrote about how the colonists had hunted wild turkeys during the autumn of 1621 and since turkey is a uniquely American bird, it gained place as the Thanksgiving meal of choice for Americans after Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.
Cranberries are important on Thanksgiving Day because according to University of Maine Cooperative Extension, American Indians used cranberries as a food source, to dye fabric and as medicine. … Due to the importance of cranberries in the 1500s and their abundance, it is believed that the pilgrims and the American Indians would have eaten them at the first Thanksgiving.
The pumpkin is a symbol of harvest time, and pumpkin pie is generally eaten during the fall and early winter. In the United States and Canada, it is usually prepared for Thanksgiving, and other occasions when pumpkin is in season.
Thanksgiving is important because it’s a positive and secular holiday where we celebrate gratitude, something of which we don’t do enough of these days.
In the letter of St.Paul to the Philippians[4:6-7] we read: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
One of the best things about thankfulness is that the more you choose it, the easier it gets. The more you profess gratitude, the more you notice things to be grateful for, the thankfulness muscles respond to exercise!
There are many references to thankfulness in the Old Testament. Listed below are some of the references and I invite you to look them up for yourselves.
Ezra 3:11. Psalm 7:17. Psalm 9:1. Psalm 35:18. Psalm 69:30. Psalm 95:1-3. Psalm 100:4-5. Psalm 106:1
Please include this Prayer of Gratitude written by John F.Kennedy in your prayers this week: “Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings—let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals—and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world. On that (this) day let us gather in sanctuaries dedicated to worship and in homes blessed by family affection to express our gratitude for the glorious gifts of God; and let us earnestly and humbly pray that He will continue to guide and sustain us in the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice, and understanding among all men and nations and of ending misery and suffering wherever they exist.”
I conclude with two bits of humour: When I think of “Thanksgiving Day,” I am reminded of the story of the little boy who saw his mother putting a thermometer in the turkey. He said, “If it is that sick, I don’t want any!”
The small resident population in a nursing home had been gathered around their humble Thanksgiving table, and the director asked each in turn to express one thing for which he or she was thankful. Thanks were expressed for a home in which to stay, families, etc. One little old lady, when her turn came, said, “I thank the Lord for two perfectly good teeth left in my mouth, one in my upper jaw and one in my lower jaw. They match so well that I can chew my food.”