Dear Thanksgiving…

Dear Thanksgiving…

I don’t do very well with your forced expressions of cheer.
Perhaps some do, but I don’t.
Maybe it stems from  me  not wanting to be told how to act or live.
Sometimes I wonder if others feel the same way when it comes to certain holidays – like you and your Turkey and Pumpkin pie…  Perhaps there are some who are like me that they feel as if they are subjected to a certain kind of feeling, or a certain kind of festive moment in time.   It’s just a photograph – a still frame, we pause…and then we move on.

Let me clarify first, Dear Thanksgiving, it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I don’t want to quantify my ability to give thanks on JUST one day.   I love you, but I don’t love what you have become.
Here’s where I struggle with you, dear Thanksgiving…

They’ve put you on television…in commercials, in jingles, it’s become increasingly worse each year.  As soon as they take down the Halloween decorations down they are putting yours

up…with the sound of Christmas carols.  I fear that commercialization and buying STUFF for ourselves has largely overshadowed what you used to represent.

We’ve even begun to dash away from your “Thanksgiving table” in order to gobble up more “sweet deals” as retailers open their doors earlier and earlier.  I’m just afraid, dear Thanksgiving, that we’ve begun to forget what being thankful is truly about.  We are all consumers who are buying more and more things that we don’t need while racking up greater and greater debts.   How does that equate to being “Thankful”?

I don’t wish to sound like a hypocrite, Dear Thanksgiving, but I too have indulged in this new creation of “Thanksgiving”.  It is extremely enticing and I see why we are all attracted to these offers…BUT are we losing ourselves in the process?  Are we becoming blind to gratefulness as we over-indulge and binge on our riches?

It is so easy to forget about the plight of the rest of the world while we leave our warm homes and go out to find more stuff to fill it with.  Are we good stewards with what God has given us?  Am I a good steward?  Or do I still have more to give…instead of take?  Could it be that in the act of giving, I once again gain an identity in gratitude?  Could it be that we can find our way back from self-indulgence?

Dear Thanksgiving, I want to be thankful for the right things in my life.
I don’t want to look back in twenty years and regret not spending more time with the people I love and not giving back when I had so much to give.   I can’t change the world, but I can change how I live and how I act, and what I represent to my family, to my children.

Dear Thanksgiving, I miss you…I hope we can meet up again soon, perhaps it can become more than just a few hours on a Thursday gather around a table or during a football game.  Perhaps, just perhaps I will place a piece of you in my pocket and in my heart and spread you around in my life every day…so that others might experience a tangible hope that we all need to get through this life.  Perhaps, just perhaps as I do, Christ’s light might be seen so that I am less and He is more…then, I will have recaptured a true sense of what you really represent in our world.

Sincerely,

A Thanksgiving seeker.
P.S. I still like your Pumpkin Pie!