November 2009
Celebrating a Moment of Thanks
by Keven Groenewold
It’s November; the month of family gatherings with turkey and pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving is a time of reflection. The traditional picture of Thanksgiving has pilgrims and Native Americans sharing the autumn harvest. It’s a picture drawn with a feeling of peace and tranquility. There’s another thanksgiving, however, that has special meaning in our nation’s rich history.
It’s a tale of unrest and fear, of a time when families were torn apart and the very survival of our nation was in question. It’s the tale of a time when a lanky, bearded president from the frontier of Illinois told Americans that “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
It’s the tale of how that same President, just days before visiting the battlefield at Gettysburg to deliver his famous address, called upon his people to give thanks for the blessings bestowed on them by their creator.
It was October 3, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving. The war was not going well for the Union. Americans from the North and the South fought each other in some of the bloodiest encounters in history. Even so, he asked the people to forget their fears and their grief. He asked them to give thanks, instead, for the “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” which they enjoyed.
Much has changed since those dark days of our young nation. There are over 300 million of us today, living around the world. All of us can vote and work and hold elected office. Every child, regardless of gender or race or color or creed, has the right to citizenship in this great nation.
However, some things have not changed. Our nation again finds itself deeply concerned. We struggle to understand the banking scandals of the last year. Many among us have seen our retirement nest eggs shrink. We all know someone who has lost their job in the last year. We worry that we have lost a standard of living and a way of life that we worked hard for.
Yet, somehow the world continues. Autumn leaves are just as colorful as they were that mythic day on Plymouth Rock in 1621. The magic aroma of roasting chile lingers in the air as it has since Antonio Espejo brought the spicy vegetable north from Mexico fifty years before the Pilgrims landed. The seasons come and go like clockwork. The timelessness of our enchanted land fill this season, as it always has regardless of our human anxieties.
This month we celebrate the 146th anniversary of Lincoln’s call to set aside one day for giving thanks. We need to follow his advice this year more than most. We need to stop—stop our hurrying, stop our worrying, stop our fearing. We need to be patient, a trait not usually valued in today’s instant gratification society. We need to look beyond our troubles to see the beauty in our lives, the love of our family and friends. We need, in short, to give thanks.
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