Thanksgiving Goes Wild
I think it’s just crazy all the cooking we do on Thanksgiving. I always wonder what the Pilgrims and Natives would think if they could see us go at it today.
Certainly their celebration was a feast. For the first time since coming to the New World, they had an abundance. For them, it was the first hope that all would go well in this new land. After months of near-starvation, sometimes having nothing more than a few kernels of parched corn, the harvest was in and it was good.
I think the point we have left behind for many years is that those Pilgrims couldn’t have survived without the help of Squanto and his buddies. They taught the Pilgrims how to live off of the land here in America. The feast they had on Thanksgiving was a shared one, not with just family members and close friends. The Pilgrims and the Natives, forefathers of two groups who would later become bitter enemies, shared their bounty with one another. Most likely, many of them couldn’t communicate with each other, had never even met. But for that time, they got along, and shared in the joy of the harvest.
What do we do today? We sit back, comfortable in our homes, not even thinking about what a harvest meant to the Pilgrims. To us, harvest is now a once-a-week trip to the Super-Store to gather items that the Pilgrims wouldn’t even recognize as food. We overeat on Thanksgiving, loosen our belts, and then either nap or watch the big football game. (Or, we spend an hour cleaning up the kitchen, then take the nap.)
It seems to me that Thanksgiving isn’t so much about giving thanks anymore, although most of us do that. It’s more about having a day off. Taking a deep breath before preparing for Christmas. Seeing relatives. Eating pie.
For me, I’m going to devote some moments to being thankful for this great nation I live in, for the ones who came before us with the fortitude to settle in this land. For the ones who fought so we could have be a free and independant nation. For those who have kept us that way. And, most of all, for God, who allows all of this, and lets every blessing come my way.
Happy Thanksgiving, all…
Add comment November 17th, 2006