Thanksgiving Day is a holiday filled with family, friends, food, naps, and sometimes a homecoming or two. Isn’t it sad that we have to establish a national holiday to remind people to give thanks for things? Modern society does not really seem to care about giving thanks very much these days. The holiday has all of the food and family that it has always had, but the really important events of this holiday season now seem to happen on Friday.
Black Friday is called that because it is traditionally the first shopping day of the Christmas season and it puts retailers “in the black” on their accounts. This is the day of giving thanks for retailers and merchants. And they are giving thanks, usually, at our expense. And the expense is often pretty high. So these days, stores are open on Thanksgiving afternoons or midnight Friday and people line up to buy the one toy that their kids absolutely have to have for Christmas.
What have we become? We are not giving thanks, we are giving in to our wants and desires. Please do not misunderstand, I do not begrudge stores and businesses from making a living. I do fault our greedy and materialistic society for corrupting a very important holiday that is supposed to be about family and giving thanks for all that we have. We seem to have lost our way.
Thanksgiving is intended for so much more. It is in the fall because it represents the feast of a bountiful year. What is more, it is a time of giving thanks for the Advent season that usually begins the Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend or the following Sunday. This is a meaning that is rarely if ever taught or even considered. We are to be giving thanks for what we have had during the full year that is coming to an end and to give thanks for the Advent of the coming of the Christ child.
As we move toward the darkest days of the year, we are hopeful and expectant. That one spark of light in the darkness is the same spark of light that is within all living things. It is the Eternal light that never goes out, is never quenched. This holiday, give thanks for of the things that have happened in the past year and that the Eternal light will grow brighter and brighter each day, to overcome the darkness of the season and the darkness that can grow so quickly in our own hearts.
TMM