A Thanksgiving to Remember

A Thanksgiving to Remember

What happened to Thanksgiving? It seems to have slipped away unnoticed, or taken against its will. Halloween was half a month ago, preceded by weeks of commercial anticipation. November 1, before all the candy had been digested, the Christmas decorations came out, nearly a full two months before the actual day. It appears that Thanksgiving is getting skipped over this year.

It is not the fault of Walmart, Home Depot, the mall, or the advertisements that we are overlooking Thanksgiving Day. Retail stores do not necessarily define the culture by telling us what to celebrate or buy or want. More than anything, the merchandising conglomerates are cultural thermometers, telling us the state of the culture. Marketing divisions try to anticipate what people want and give it to them. After all, if they correctly predict the consumer's mood, they make money. Retail brings the supply to our demand. After all, their chief interest is profit.

Incidentally, profit is one reason Thanksgiving is ignored. Thanksgiving is not as marketable and consumable as either Halloween or Christmas, and so the public is not as interested in it. What about Thanksgiving gets people excited to shop? Other than preparation for the meal, not much. What about Thanksgiving involves decorations? Again, not much. Your neighbor could fill his yard with a variety of Halloween-themed images, and you could adorn your house and property in a variety of Christmas décor, but neither of you can do the same with Thanksgiving. There is one house near our neighborhood that is quite literally filled with inflatable turkeys, but whoever lives there is clearly trying too hard.

Christmas enthusiasts will say that there’s nothing wrong with loving Christmas enough to decorate as soon as possible. That is true, and it is possible to celebrate Thanksgiving properly while anticipating Christmas. However, it is quite difficult to give proper respect to both holidays simultaneously. We humans are not designed to focus on multiple things at once. Holiday seasons are meant to be set apart from everything else. We naturally follow this principle and prioritize Christmas, but not Thanksgiving. Put simply, even if we claim Thanksgiving is just as important as Christmas, between the two we will choose Christmas, even in the Thanksgiving season.

Before we examine the reason that we give Thanksgiving second place, we should first address why it is important to prioritize the Thanksgiving season. One reason is that it is both a uniquely American and a uniquely Christian holiday. It is uniquely American because it is rooted in God’s providing for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in their early years. America owes much to those early pioneers who laid the foundation for our government and helped create the culture we take for granted. Thanksgiving is uniquely Christian because thankfulness is a basic response to what the Lord has done for us. A thankful attitude is one of the first lines of defense against a culture that forgets God. In Romans 1, before the downward spiral of sin descends into homosexuality and other forms of perversion, wicked men first forsake thankfulness: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21). It is no surprise that our culture offers a tepid response to Thanksgiving: it is already much further down the spiral than mere unthankfulness.

Another reason it is important to prioritize Thanksgiving is closely connected to the first: the holiday is entirely dedicated to remembering. Thankfulness requires us to recall to mind what God has done for us materially and personally, nationally, as a Christian people, and as believing individuals. In Deuteronomy, God literally warns Israel against forgetting what He did for them. “Beware,” He says in Deuteronomy 6:12, “lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” Instead, verse 13 says, “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.” Notice how closely linked remembrance is to obeying, loving, fearing, and identifying with the Lord. Obviously, thankfulness and remembering are connected: remembering what God has done naturally leads us to be thankful. Conversely, we cannot be thankful without journeying into the past to relive God’s wonderful works.

At present, American culture does not remember. Instead, we feel things. We buy and decorate and consume and move on to the next thing. We do this because we are, at heart, progressives who prefer tomorrow’s possibilities to yesterday’s blessings. We like what we are and think we are superior to what we were, not realizing that tomorrow we will cast today aside as well. Yes, our Christmas celebration includes aspects of nostalgia, but it is so we can feel “like it is Christmas,” not so we can learn any lessons from our forefathers. Every year, America tries to conjure the Christmas spirit while simultaneously undermining the traditions and Christian religion that made it possible.

By contrast, Thanksgiving is all about remembering. It is simply impossible to avoid it. As we celebrate, we are reminded that our good gifts come from God. Because the holiday is as simple as a meal, we can count our blessings without getting lost in the hype. Among these blessings, of course, is the food we consume at Thanksgiving. However, we do not celebrate alone. More than any other holiday, the orientation at Thanksgiving is outward: we celebrate with our family, and we feast together. The basic elements of Thanksgiving remain very similar to those of the Separatist Plymouth settlers 400 years ago.

Thanksgiving will never be popular in America until we experience revival. Thanksgiving is family-centered, tradition-centered, and God-centered—three things our culture has willfully rejected. Far from accepting the principles of a culture that has forgotten God and moving from one marketable holiday to another, we should do the Christian and American thing. We should pause from the commercialism, gather with our families, remember the Lord, bless Him for His benefits—and then enjoy those benefits. It is the right thing to do.

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The above article was written by Jonathan Kyser. He is a pastoral assistant at NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.

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