Post 49 – What Think You of Thanksgiving?

Dear Family and Friends

It is now almost November, I don’t know about you, but this year seems to have flown by. Maybe it is because my life consists much of the same things day after day – which I am so very grateful for. Each day is a blessing in my life and I have so much to be thankful for and being alive is just one of them!

Have you ever just stopped to think of all the things in your life that you have, to be thankful for – even when your life is not going according to your plan or how you think your life should be going at this time. If you have not done so, perhaps this month is a great time to begin to do so.

Stop right now and ponder on the things in your life that you are grateful for – or should be grateful for and write them all down. I bet you will be surprised at how long your list of gratitude is. Now, once you have made your list, the next step is to say a prayer of gratitude to your Heavenly Father for all those blessings He has so generously provided for you and those you love – family and friends!

All this month I want to share with you articles on some form of Thanksgiving. I hope you will enjoy them as well as learn from them. Each one gives a different approach to the upcoming day of Thanksgiving. Here is the first one:

What Think You of Thanksgiving?

John B. Stohlton Nov. 20, 1984 • Devotional

Several years ago, a close friend wrote a provocative little book that she entitled What Think You of Christmas? With all due credit to my friend, I’d like to pose the question to you: “What think you of Thanksgiving?”

Is Thanksgiving celebrated in your home as a significant religious holiday, or is it a day filled with food, football, and plans to begin really serious Christmas shopping?

It is symptomatic of our time that Thanksgiving has lost much of its spiritual flavor. The same pagan attitudes and pressures that have led many to substitute Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for our Savior at Christmas and Easter celebrations have had a profound effect on our Thanksgiving observances. Many of our observances have become celebrations of consumption rather than spiritual feasts of love, gratitude, and sharing. Somehow we have lost the custom of sharing the blessings of God’s providence with those who are in need.

One tradition we have had in our family as my children have grown was to invite someone who would otherwise either be alone for Thanksgiving or would not have a Thanksgiving dinner to our home to spend the day with us. Many times, we would make plates and take them to those who worked with my husband. Recently we volunteer with the community YMCA to gather food for the local food banks in our town. It is very rewarding to do and it is a family affair – we invite as many of our family members as are available to help out at this event. Then we deliver the food we have collected to the food bank. I know that this is what the Savior did in His earthly ministry was to serve others and to provide for their temporal needs – like when He fed he five thousand with the five fishes and the two loaves of bread. We too can help feed those who are in need and otherwise would go without. I know this is nothing grand, but I believe that it is the simple and small things that sometimes make the biggest difference😊

It hasn’t always been so. The first community Thanksgiving was celebrated by our Pilgrim forefathers at Plymouth in the fall of 1621. Theirs was a celebration of gratitude to a Heavenly Father who had sent a bounteous harvest to that beleaguered little colony. Almost half of Plymouth’s original 101 settlers had died during the severe winter of 1620–21. Those who survived that first winter struggled to understand the vagaries of farming in the new land. Most of the Plymouth Pilgrims had been merchants and artisans in England, and they were woefully unprepared to live off the land. They had little seed and had to depend upon corn kernels and other unfamiliar seed left behind by the Indians. Yet their very lives depended upon reaping a harvest sufficient to see them through another winter. As the bounteous harvest was gathered in the storehouses in the fall of 1621, a grateful and relieved Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day period of fasting and celebration. That celebration was at least partially borrowed from the admonition found in Leviticus that provides: “When ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord . . . and ye shall rejoice before the Lord, your God” (Leviticus 23:39–40).

It is hard to celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving when you may live with others who would rather celebrate the game on the television, but in our house my kids make sure that we at least give a prayer of thanks before we all sit down to enjoy our meal and we also give thanks for the time we are able to spend together. I am not sure how each of you celebrate your Thanksgiving, but maybe the articles I share with you this month will be of some help even if you don’t have a special celebration for the day.

Maybe we can all use a boost of giving thanks to our Heavenly Father and turn our day of Thanksgiving into a day of giving to those in need and of giving thanks for our blessings to our Heavenly Father for those blessings in our lives – and yes like the Pilgrims we too can be thankful for the struggles in our lives and the fact that we are here to celebrate this upcoming day in such a grand way.

That first feast and many subsequent celebrations of Thanksgiving focused upon man’s relationship with his Heavenly Father. Our forefathers understood well their dependence on God. George Washington, in his proclamation establishing the 1789 Thanksgiving celebration, said in part,

Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor. . . that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country. [The Writings of George Washington from the Original Main Source, 1745–1799, vol. 30 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1939), pp. 427–28]

I have found the importance of keeping my focus on my Heavenly Father and on my Savior, Jesus Christ – as well as the importance of giving thanks to Them for all the blessings in my life. I have made it practice -- each time I get a new journal, I flip through every few page and write at the top of those pages: “How have I seen the hand of the Lord in my life today?” and “What has the Lord blessed my with this week?” this helps me to refocus every time I come to those pages and be sure to thank my Heavenly Father for the gifts He has given me. It is important to be thankful every day, but especially during the holiday season.

King Benjamin clearly taught the sacred origin of Thanksgiving when he proclaimed unto his people:

O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!

I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another. . . . I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. [Mosiah 2:19–21]

Regrettably, with prosperity came false and foolish notions. People who once rendered thankful praise to their God soon came to praise their own industry and intellect. Reverend Adam Reid, in celebrating Thanksgiving in 1840, prophetically observed:

And yet it is difficult to tell how long this revered custom [of Thanksgiving] shall be permitted to prevail; for in spite of all that is said about the.march of intellect and the enlightenment of the age, the temper of the times is rash and revolutionary. There is a spirit of infidel independence and reckless radicalism widely at work, which spurns at every sacred restraint. [Principles of National Prosperity: A Discourse Delivered at Salisbury, Conn., on the Day of the Annual Thanksgiving, Nov. 19th, 1840, (Hartford: Elihu Geer, 1841), pp. 6–7]

Even the most cursory reading of the Book of Mormon should give all of us reason to pause and consider. The circumstances and attitudes described by Reverend Reid were repeated time after time as succeeding generations became prosperous and inevitably estranged from their God. The significance of Thanksgiving goes far beyond the legal holiday. Thanksgiving is the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The proper observance of the holiday places us in proper relationship with our Heavenly Father. It acknowledges our dependence upon him and our responsibility for one another.

This month it might be a good idea to seriously ponder our dependence upon our Heavenly Father and our responsibility to care for those in need. It may also be a time to give gloves and mittens as the days and nights are going to be getting colder here soon😊 Let us show our love for our Savior by following His example of kindness and humbly following His example of providing for those around Him.

I would hope that as we make plans for our Thanksgiving celebration we would contemplate the great blessings we enjoy. As we contemplate our blessings, thought should be given as to how we can share a portion of our material blessings with those who have so little—for it is through sharing with our brothers and sisters that we most eloquently express our thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father.

Our task today is to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past—to proclaim with joyful hearts and voices that we are the literal children of God, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth, that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can enjoy eternal life, that we are led by a mighty prophet of God, that we live in a blessed land of promise, that we share together as brothers and sisters the blessings and vicissitudes of mortal life.

These thoughts are good – we need to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past – to proclaim the great blessings we enjoy with our family and friends at this time of year. We can take the time to let our Heavenly father kn0w that we know that we are His children and that we need to thank Him for all of His many blessings hat we have received throughout our year.

May we as a people proclaim these truths with thankful voices and hearts, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well, we have come to the end of out talk for this post. I hope and pray that each of you who read this post and those that follow this month, that you have gained a little insight about the pilgrims who had their first thanksgiving celebration all those years ago and then those who created the tradition we still have today. Let us each think about all that our Father in Heaven has blessed us with and let us each remember to give thanks to Him for those blessings daily. Until my next post – everyone please make it a week of giving thanks. Some ideas for giving thanks -- send a thank-you card to someone for something they have done for you, said to you that uplifted your spirits one day, or how their smile and greeting each day at work or wherever has been a bright spot in your day! There are many ways you can say thanks to those around you, but first give thanks to your Father in heaven.