Somewhere, sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas used to be a holiday. Not Black Friday…Thanksgiving.
I’m guilty.
So, I took out my Pilgrims, turkeys, pumpkins, colored leaf garland, and Native Americans. I dressed my mantle in a Thanksgiving tradition. Hung a corded rope with block styled letters reading “GIVE THANKS” which I found on Pinterest, and felt a whee bit better about myself.
For me, reflecting on holiday memories of the past always helps to bring light. One Thanksgiving when the kids were all small, I was preparing a feast for 30 to 40 people. As a mom with young children, I had gotten everyone to bed and started cooking while cleaning. Around 1:00am the aroma flowing from the kitchen smelled of lemon as I sorted through the silverware making sure everyone had the proper utensils at each place setting.
Lemon?
As I turned the corner of my kitchen from the dining room, I noticed the yellow Pledge spray can just inches away from the yellow Pam spray can. Headlines flashed through my mind, “Family poisoned from Thanksgiving Dressing laced with cleaning product.” Consequently, I started over on the Cornbread Dressing.
One Thanksgiving, I reached for the Chili Powder instead of the Cinnamon giving my Pumpkin Pies quite a bit of lift.
There was the year my nephew was run-over by the go-cart; and the time our horse, Clyde, got out and was on the neighbor’s back porch just as they were savoring the first bites of turkey.
Then my memory floated to the Thanksgiving in 1999, when a little boy, originally named Sasha, came to sit at our table. We’d spent the last two weeks in Moscow, Russia, finalizing his adoption. My whole family came for Thanksgiving dinner to meet him. He was scrawny and grayish in color from malnutrition. And though he couldn’t understand my words, he could understand his life was significantly different.
“How blessed we are to be Americans!” I thought, tying the shoe lace on his new boots. But then, I really have it wrong.
How blessed I am that someone, years ago, before I came into existence, sold everything they had; risk everything they knew; left everyone they loved; to cross a big ocean, to come to an unknown world, so hundreds of years later I can say, “How blessed I am.”
Thanksgiving is a celebration of life – survival. The first Thanksgiving was launched into being because over half the people in the colony had died that year…but they were alive. It was a celebration of new friendships with Native Americans. It was about helping one another in rough, grueling times. It was about gratitude to God.
Thanksgiving…not Black Friday…is the day we celebrate.
May yours be filled with GRATITUDE.
