'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

I’ll take the night before Thanksgiving over Christmas Eve any year. Christmas Eve is a tired ol’day, worn out by the flurry of activity preceding it, and by the time it arrives, usually too soon, it’s all out of breath as it plops its burden of stress and strain---last minute shopping, checklists, nagging questions (Did I get her the right gift? Will it fit him? Should I have just given the kids money and been done with it?) ---at your doorstep.

But the night before Thanksgiving is different. At least it is for me. It’s tucked in between Halloween and Christmas, and if you’re not careful, you’ll miss it. While the world rushes to Christmas, Thanksgiving just sits there, calmly inviting whosoever will to come and visit a while.

Some families get together the night before Thanksgiving, and that in itself is something of a miracle. When they do, the focus is usually more on each other than in exchanging gifts.

My family would usually travel to my mom’s side of the family for Thanksgiving. Grandmother’s house was small, simple and plain. By the time we arrived from a three hour trip, it was well nigh impossible to corral my three brothers and me. But somehow they did, and we even liked it. In that little house almost on the prairie in Glencoe, Oklahoma, we visited with each other.

And I got to know my grandmother that way.

Soon we would pile in the car, Grandmother with us, and drive to Aunt Dee’s and Uncle Leo’s house where we would stay the night. Maybe it was because I had just been to Grandmother’s, but their home seemed enormous to me. It allowed plenty of room for roaming, and its hidden nooks, which seemed to me expressly made for hiding, invited us boys into them only so we could leap out of them, scaring unsuspecting victims. At some point in all the jumping and running and hollering and hiding, Uncle Leo’s booming base voice would bellow, “Time for dinner,” and like hungry bear cubs running to their den, we would dash to the table.

And then the calm, allowing space for conversation.

And I got to know my aunt and uncle and cousins that way.

I hope we haven’t forgotten the night before Thanksgiving because it just might be the best preparation for Thanksgiving Day. If we forget it, it’s because we’ve lost our sense of thankfulness; it’s because we’ve become consumers and receivers---getting, receiving, leaving, exiting: “See ya next year,” we wave, rushing, with thoughts of specials on “Black Friday,” toward another commercial Christmas.

Giving thanks isn’t the norm. In the story of the 10 lepers Jesus healed, only one returned to thank him. “Where are the other nine?” (Luke 17:17), Jesus asked the one who returned. Like so many today, having received what they wanted, they were too busy to say, “Thanks.”

Before you bypass the night before Thanksgiving, try pausing and enjoying it, even if just for a little while. That’s what I plan to do. Hopefully, it will set me on the path to being more thankful.

So, I’m going to step outside, stare into the night sky, and if the stars are out, I’m going to smile as they twinkle back at me. Then I’m going to step inside and give thanks for my family, each one of them.

Then I’m going to call some family members who live far away and thank them for being who they are.

And as I drift off to sleep the night before Thanksgiving, I’m going to give thanks for a God who cares.

And waking to Thanksgiving Day, I’m going to give thanks for the smell of hot coffee brewing, for the glowing sunrise that chases away the early morning fog, for the blue sky or gentle pitter patter of rain, for the turkey and dressing with all the trimmings, for the quiet glow of the setting sun, for the twitter of birds preparing for rest, and for the cycle of life---even for all its spins, and turns, and starts, and stops.

And then, the night before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day will be history once again.

But if we live it right, “thanks living” can become a way of life, making each moment a gift in the most wonderful time of any year.

Contact David B.Whitlock, Ph.D., at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com.

Skipping Thanksgiving

Have you noticed how easily we pass from Halloween to Christmas, from October to December, from “Trick or Treat,” to “Here Comes Santa Claus”?

And Thanksgiving gets bypassed once again. Only now it happens with greater celerity and casualness. We’re beyond feeling any guilt about it.

I understand. I feel it, too. Thanksgiving’s absence matches the seasons: October is filled with fall foliage, arresting in its brilliant colors of orange, yellow, amber, and red as the maple, ash, oak, and hickory trees reach the peak of their autumn display; December, with the Christmas decorations of green wreaths, red and white candy canes, shiny silver tinsel over boughs, is a month of anticipation: the possibility, the hope, for a blanket of white snow on Christmas Eve, the jolly St. Nick Christmas stockings in red, white, and green, hanging over the warm glow of the fire place, awaiting the descent of Santa down the chimney in his contrasting uniform of red and white with black boots and belt.

But Thanksgiving falls in November, when the fall leaves have disappeared and have to be raked, the tree limbs are starkly naked, the sun sets before you get home from work, and a gray drabness seems to permeate the universe with a dismal somberness. Thanksgiving, set in between the ghosts and goblins of Halloween and the Santa and elves of Christmas, doesn’t stand a chance with its hapless turkey marked down on special at the local grocery store. Thanksgiving is in-between, and like the insecure middle child, seems uncomfortably out of place, having to fight for attention and recognition.

But it goes deeper than merely the differences in seasons. We Americans identify ourselves, the United States, as a consumer nation, and we do so with good reason: with only 5% of the world’s population we consume 25% of the world’s energy resources. We accumulate stuff and rent spaces to store the stuff we’ve bought on credit. And our lifestyle has come to roost on Wall Street with a financial debacle, in our environment with compromised resources, and in our health with overstressed bodies. We take and take, and stretch and stretch, for more and more, until we have made ourselves sick with Halloween candy and driven ourselves in debt with Christmas gifts.

And there sits that lonely turkey in the middle of the table. We barely have time anymore to pause, and sit, and share stories with family about life, and memories, and journeys, so busy we are with our rushing, and work, and previous commitments.

We would do well, this Thanksgiving Day, to reflect on our thanksgiving roots, remembering that the first Thanksgiving was born out of adversity: a few pilgrims and Native Americans, having survived the harsh winter of 1620, gathered to give thanks for the harvest of 1621. Grateful for the basics of life---God, family, and friends---they shared some food, laughed, talked, and rejoiced amidst their grim circumstances. It wasn’t until 1863 that the thanksgiving tradition became an official holiday. President Abraham Lincoln, spurred by journalist Sara Josepha Hale, declared the last Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving. You’ll recall Lincoln’s situation was less than ideal: the future of a United States was in serious question, the carnage of thousands of young men at Fredericksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg was fresh on his mind as he called for all Americans to pause and give thanks for, “the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

Instead of skipping Thanksgiving perhaps we would do well to draw on the spirit of thanksgiving past, pulling up a place and a time where not so long ago, amidst trying circumstances, people propped their chairs back, talked and listened to one another, reflected on life, and thanked God for it.

Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com, and his website is DavidBWhitlock.com