What is it about Thanksgiving that just rings a bell?

It's so funny that I forget all about this thing until its Thanksgiving and then around the holidays and I always feel SO compelled to write. I have said it year after year and for me, there are few things that are so utterly expressive and filled with so many of the totems of what it is to be an American as there are in the Thanksgiving celebration.

I mean really, Christmas is almost entirely man made and, at the least mistreated, but Thanksgiving ~ com'on!....

Thanksgiving is the antithesis of Christmas. It is in its original spirit and celebration, depending on what you believe, the act of rending thanks, or expressing gratitude for life, fate or God's or the grand wheel of life's favors and mercies.

For all the inner gratitude we feel for our blessings and kindnesses received, the celebration of Thankfulness, the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the apotheosis of our following that impulse.

Victor Hugo said, "To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

OK, so what does it mean to be thankful?

Strip out the traditional holiday and its implications for America, leaving only the the state of, the gift of thankfulness ~ regardless of how jaded and hardened we have become ~ thankfulness is a uniquely human response. Gratitude involves memory of the past, awareness of the present, and trust for the future, it must be preeminently a human response.

That's the true Thanksgiving gift and what's hyper-American about it. It doesn't discriminate or discount or divide. Whatever the people, whatever the belief or the name used for God, whatever the origin of one's mother or father ~ Thanksgiving is the day in America when we stop the madness of 'making it', gather together and enjoy the blessings; large and small; and enjoy 'the harvest' of our toil of the past year. It is 'give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses" in practice; and by practicing it, you BECOME American. In practice, it is the secular equivalent of the sacrament for Americans.

In this moment in time, with society feeling less and less like there are any clear answers to anything, Thanksgiving Day is a joyous family festival during which, almost unconsciously, we gather, no matter where we are, with friends and family and take a moment to just “BE” within the love of those we love and share ours with those we see too seldom.

Thanksgiving has lots of meaning to people in America and, born here or not, it retains a powerful hold on our collective psyche. Amidst the woes of unemployment, diminished resources, loved ones far away and lost to us forever, I still hear people talking in amazement about the discoveries they have made this year, whilst searching for the metaphoric change in the cushions and living within a new set of circumstances, they have re discovered themselves this year. People are looking at what they have. We have food on the table, We have friends and people we care about who care about us, We have family. Thanksgiving makes us pause and say we're lucky to have this. We are possibly, as a people, on the brink of re discovering that those are the true pleasures of life.

Thanksgiving has ceaselessly evolved since the Pilgrim's mythic celebration and other early harvest festivals, and yet no matter the meanings, patriotic or political intentions or global-societal distractions, emphasis on football games or “Black Friday” shopping insanity, on Thanksgiving, we manage to continue to distill a unique, cohesive narrative that is seemingly eternally emotionally electroplated to the 4th Thursday of November, when we express gratitude for the small blessings; an integral our annual habit. Since the Nation’s founding, Thanksgiving has been engrained in who we are, offering us an opportunity to not just to remember, but reflect on our history, and examine what it means to be American.

George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789 with these words:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,…both Houses of Congress have requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed… that we may then all unite in … humble thanks for …for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; and particularly…the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…"

After years of tumbling through our lives, in various incarnations, picking up pieces of our collective thought, through a number of historical events, proclamations and changes, President Lincoln. in one of the nation's darkest hours, proclaimed the last Thursday in November of thanksgiving in the year 1863; after the continuous prodding of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of then popular Godey's Lady's Book; who deserves recognition as the Mother of the American Thanksgiving. The following editor's column was part of the long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale to get Thanksgiving accepted as a national holiday in the United States.

"We are most happy to agree with the large majority of the governors of the different States -- as shown in their unanimity of action for several past years, and which, we hope, will this year be adopted by all -- that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY Of NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.

"… when the noise and tumult of wordliness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart….

"…drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other; and of peace and good-will to all men".

In the poem "The Pumpkin" by 19th century poet John Greenleaf Whittier, the tradition of Thanksgiving is described in rich symbolism, as a time of remembrance and return, a celebration of abundance, both of sustenance and of love, of the family gathering.

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow...

After what has seemed like a prolonged storm in America, many of us are filled and renewed with hope and faith in the idea of America and who we are. Yet we approach days that are sure to see uneasy transition to our society, our culture, as well as political and economic futures.

Thinking on how many times it seemed we were so close to losing the best of ourselves as Americans, I hear the words of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863. A few words, eloquent like a prayer or incantation that washes over you and draws you back to another time of rebirth and transition. It is at the heart of a spirit that is disappearing with frightening rapidity. A spirit that used to characterize and embody what Abraham Lincoln called, "the better angels of our nature."

From humble beginnings, this son of uneducated farmer pioneers, Lincoln’s life is an irrefutable demonstration of our dreams and of what is possible in America and his words articulate and epitomize the truest meaning of hope and peace and gratefulness of blessings received; all the things of Thanksgiving in America.


"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy". "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

Never in our history have those words been more true.

So, we can take advantage of this moment with the future ahead, to be more innately thankful for the simple and proverbial "small blessings" in life will, out of habit, make us more readily grateful to and for the people around us.

A sincere "Thank you" to a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, a child, a neighbor, a clerk at the store, a person on the street. Then, because we set gratitude at the core of our character, we instinctively remember to give a heartfelt "Thank you"...and round it goes. As we learn the habit of thanking people we are acknowledging our dependence on them, and we develop a keener sense of just how closely tied we all are on what a friend of mine calls "this green and muddy stone".

So, as we come to Thanksgiving Day, let's absolutely give thanks....to everyone and for everything. It's too naive and simple to say that Thanksgiving thoughts are the kind of thoughts that we should have all year long. Of course, they are. It is the folks with thankful hearts whose lives are filled with song, right? So, how do we do that? DO we sing all day long? (you know I do, but we all know what my problem is). No, what is easier to implement in our lives, is to take time for kindness, even if it dawns on you after the fact, go back and act on that kindness.

Extend kindness to others through the year with out judgment or assumption of their situation or how they got there and fill your life with a Thanksgiving Peace that lasts the whole year through!