While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday – at least that’s what Wikipedia, the online dictionary told me. I’m not buying it.
Thankfully, I have the freedom to say what I think.
How can it be so easy to declare that Thanksgiving is no longer a time set aside to give thanks.
If they aren’t thanking God for life itself, who are they giving thanks to?
The Pilgrims were giving thanks to God and the Native Americans for surviving a brutal winter and so began a day of Thanksgiving.
Has life changed so much that we don’t feel the need to be grateful and say thanks anymore?
Maybe I’m just having separation anxiety – but I worry that the day will come when the online dictionary will tell me that Christmas is now a holiday referred to as Xmas. It feels as though we’re getting closer to renaming the day that Christ was born as the retail world refers to Christmas as just “the holidays” and schools celebrate the day without religion.
Have we gotten to the point that it’s lame to say I’m a Christian, and I thank God for the many blessings He has given me?
We are fortunate to live in a country where we are free to express our beliefs without being crucified, yet are we really OK with taking the “thanks” out of Thanksgiving or the “Christ” out of Christmas?
I don’t want to sound ungrateful or thankless. I am truly thankful to live in a society which is diversified and open to all beliefs and cultures.
I suppose it’s more a sign of the times with so much uncertainty of what lies ahead, especially for our children and grandchildren. I want future generations to know and understand why this day was set aside for giving thanks, to be grateful to God and for all of those before us, who made this life of freedom possible.
I will thank God personally and quietly for being patient with me as I search for my own answers instead of accepting the ones He has already given me.
For directing me even when I don’t want direction, for teaching me through times of trouble and most of all for forgiving me as I constantly fall short of being Christ-like.
I’m going to get off my soapbox now and get on with the “holidays.”
“It has seemed to me fit and proper that (God’s gifts) should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens...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.” Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863
