Simply Said: It's Thanksgiving

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.  ~William Arthur Ward

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Simply, all you need to celebrate this day is to be grateful and share some food.

At Thanksgiving, it isn’t a requisite to be joyful like at Christmas or New Year’s Day. You just have to be thankful. Gratitude and joy are two different things and can be mutually exclusive. You really don’t even have to be social. You can be reflective. And more importantly you don’t have to go into debt to celebrate. The meal can be large or small. And if someone can’t afford the meal, chances are the next person will provide it. Thanksgiving is communal. The celebrants can be the community of family, or from a larger community where strangers become acquainted while breaking bread.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

That is why I like Thanksgiving. Not the thanksgiving of historic annihilation and extermination. That part of the story will be debated until life no more. I like the Thanksgiving that says to the Universe and the Creator “THANK YOU!!”. I love the Thanksgiving of sharing, gratitude and community. 

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our Thanksgiving.  ~W.T. Purkiser

I also like Thanksgiving because it is NOT a religious holiday, per se.But you surely can put a religious spin on it. But you don’t find yourself having to be uber-pious or politically correct or aware. “Happy Thanksgiving” works for everyone, Jew, Christian, Muslim, liberal or conservative or any other. We can all have a spirit of Thanksgiving. We can be in a place of gratitude and if we are really fortunate, have so much to be grateful for that we even continue the celebration to the next day. I am energized by the concept.

We bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that we have known:
      Our mothers’ arms,
      The strength of our fathers,
      The playmates of our childhood,
      The wonderful stories brought to us from the lives of many who
      talked of days gone by when fairies and giants and diverse kinds
      of magic held sway;
      The tears we have shed, the tears we have seen;
      The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the eye with
      its reminder that life is good.
For all these we make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

                             Excerpt from Howard Thurman, Litany of Thanksgiving.

I remember my best Thanksgivings, like my best Christmases to be when I was a child at my parents’ home. Thanksgiving was a party, reunion, food fest, cultural heritage celebration all in one. One year, as many as 60-80 people came to dinner. Cooking started days in advance. The aunts all brought turkeys; I think there were three that year. Another family friend brought her famous layered Jell-O molds. They filled the refrigerator in the space between the other dishes. People seemed to eat in informal shifts. The kids claimed card tables in the living room; the men gathered around the television in the den; the teen boys in the garage and the women and young women were everywhere. Thanksgiving at my house, the home of a minister and his wife, was open to family members and anyone from the church who didn’t have family.

Now it’s different. The kids are grown; the grandkids grown; the aunts and others transitioned on. So instead of 60 there will be dinner for six. But we will have an extra plate. We always have an extra plate. It’s Thanksgiving.