Thanksgiving

I am an unabashed fan of Norman Rockwell, iconic American artist of the 1940’s-60’s. It doesn’t matter whether you are 19 or 99, I am sure you have seen his famous Saturday Evening Post cover of a family sitting down to enjoy their turkey dinner. Although I don’t know for sure, I feel strongly that the artist implied that a sincere prayer of gratitude was offered over that meal as an expression of this family’s gratitude for the blessings of family, freedom, bounty, opportunity and prosperity.

I am afraid, though, that in many of our homes Thanksgiving may not be celebrated any longer as a significant religious holiday. I think many of our observances have become celebrations of consumption rather than spiritual feast of of love, gratitude, and sharing.

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, just 11 months before. Most of the Plymouth Pilgrims had been merchants and artisans in England, and they were woefully unprepared to live off the land. Fortunately a bounteous harvest came in that fall and the native Americans shared with them what they had and a grateful and relieved Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day period of fasting and then celebration.

That celebration was at least partially borrowed from the admonition found in the Biblical book of 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 (Lev. 23:39-40).

That first feast and many subsequent celebrations of Thanksgiving focused upon man’s relationship with his God. Our subsequent 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.”

King Benjamin, in The Book of Mormon 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 could 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 humanistic notions. People who once rendered thankful praise to their God soon came to praise their own industry and intellect and forgot their God. In like manner even Christmas and Easter have been grossly distorted.

I would suggest that our task today is to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past—to proclaim with joyful hearts and voices that the Gospel of God has been restored to the world, that this land, identified by God as the choicest and most favored land above all others is our land and that we respect it, will protect it, and not defile it, and that we serve our brothers and sisters more than we do and resolve to never take more than we give.

Remember always that it wasn’t our intellect or our acquired abilities that enabled us to be here today. May an attitude of thankfulness to God always be with us, and not just in the time it takes to listen to a blessing on our lovely Thanksgiving feast.