Thanksgiving Not Uniquely Christian

Thanksgiving… a chance to rest up before the big push to Christmas…or is it?  The thing is, Thanksgiving is not specifically a Christian Holiday.  Don’t get mad at me for saying that.  What I mean is that it isn’t a Holiday mandated or connected to anything that is uniquely Christian.  One can be of any religion or no religion at all, and still “give thanks”.  It really was started as a way to remember the courage of our American Pilgrim ancestors.  They courageously survived their first year, or so, by overcoming starvation, loss of crops, sickness, and fights with the Native population.  Tradition says that they overcame many of those obstacles through making peace with the Indians.  As an act of thanks they had a feast to celebrate their survival.  Who did they thank?  The easy answer is God… after all, they were a Christian colony.  It would have been entirely appropriate for them to take a break from all the hard work and hardships and thank God for their survival.  I suspect they were thanking each other for the support of their community.  Without their coming together they wouldn’t have survived.  They looked after each other, they shared meager supplies with each other, and they nursed each other through sickness.  I think they also thanked their Native neighbors.  The Indians shared of their food, taught the Colonist better planting practices and better crops to grow.  The Indians were very crucial to the survival of the small colony.  Without each other and without the Indians we possibly wouldn’t be here today!

That isn’t the whole story, though…they did thank God.  God who helped them survive the voyage to the New World.  God, who helped them survive that first year.  God, who used non-Christians (the Indians) to help them learn to survive in their new home, certainly was with them each step of the way…even to encouraging them to make peace with their new neighbors.   Their thankfulness wasn’t a frivolous thing.  It came from the painful experience of watching their friends and families die.  It was a thankfulness that came from the recognition that without each other, without their Indian neighbors, and without God they would not be alive!

So…this Thanksgiving…I hope that each of us can think deeply about how God has given us one more year.  One more year to thank Him, one more year to thank our neighbors (and hopefully to live in peace with them) and one more year to thank each other for the support, love and guidance we have received from each other.

“Thank You, God, and thank all of you”.

Grace and Peace in Jesus,

Pastor Bill

photo credit: Mike Licht