Thanksgiving Thoughts 2022

 This is Thanksgiving week, 2022.  The first snow is melting outside my window as I write. Yesterday we spent the afternoon sledding on the hill behind our house with our younger grandchildren, ages 11, 9 and 6.  It was a glorious day for grandparents in their 70s who are still healthy enough to mount a sled and tumble down the hill without ending up in Urgent Care or the nursing home.

 On Thursday, we are expecting all our grandchildren to be at our house and two of our three children with their spouses.  My wife has been shopping for a week. She has the menu planned: traditional turkey and ham, mashed potatoes (that I will peel and chop), corn bread dressing (her mother’s southern recipe), gravy, green beans, salad (both vegetable and fruit), cranberries, and, last but not least, our traditional pecan pie baked by our daughter who cooks it just the way my mother did.

 Every family, I suppose, has their traditions for this particular day, traditions filled with memories. But, as we age, the empty spaces continue to grow.  Our parents, who bestowed upon us our earliest memories for this holiday have long since left this earth.  My wife’s mother died unexpectedly in her sleep the day after we celebrated Thanksgiving at their house in 1986.  It was the year  our daughter was born who is now the mother of the children who keep us young sledding in the snow.

 This is a uniquely American holiday, a time set aside to give thanks with family and friends. From the first it has been a multi-cultural day.  Most trace its earliest roots to the Plymouth Colony that landed in in Plymouth, Mass. In 1620.  Half of the colonists died during the first year. Perhaps many more would have had it not been for the assistance of the Wapanoag Indians who welcomed them.  In spite of their losses, they gave thanks in a feast in 1622 that included the Indians who outnumbered them 2:1.

 We are no longer simply Anglo-European Americans. In fact, we never have been.  There are at least 350 different languages spoken in homes in the United States making us one of the most linguistically diverse populations on earth.  We are Americans of every stripe and color and language.  This week American families and friends of different ethnicities and languages will gather to to give thanks for God’s goodness and His grace. The foods will vary from house to house as will the words spoken.  The absence of loved ones will remind us that we are mortal men and women.  The laughter of our children will inspire us for a better future.

 Thanksgiving can give us a preview of Heaven.  John declared in the book of Revelation, “I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all the tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” 

 May we all give thanks to the Creator of all that is beautiful and good, and to our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ who has prepared a greater feast awaiting us in Heaven. (Revelation 19:9).