What do you do when it’s all different? How do you celebrate when fear reigns? How can we remember when traditions have to set aside for a year? What if this is the last time we all get to be together?
These are only a few of the questions we are wrestling with as we start this awkward Thanksgiving week. Officials are telling us not to travel, shamers are berating anyone even entertaining visiting family this holiday. It’s a great heaping mass of confusion. 2020 robs us of the one day a year we seem to say, as one, “Let’s be thankful,” right?
I don’t think so. In 1621, a group of Puritans celebrated one of the first Thanksgivings (there is a debate on the actual “first”). They celebrated because they had survived the harsh, dark, New England winter and had found a bountiful harvest. Everything was new for those first celebrators. Some would never see family or friends from the old world ever again. Many didn’t survive that first winter and weren’t there for the celebration. We shattered friendships and broke the trust with the indigenous First Nations People.
Those early celebrations had everything right and wrong. They had reasons to be grateful and reasons to mourn. They focused on the goodness—at least for a while.
In 2020 we may be closer to those first celebrations than any Thanksgiving in the intervening years. Our sense of loss and the distance from loved one’s weigh us down. We, the people, can become overwhelmed by the grayness that surrounds us or we can rise and fight to see the light of day. We can wrestle out the things we are thankful for in this year.
Thanksgiving is practice. It is more than a day of gluttony. It is the way we wake up. It is the way we see the day. It is the hope we cling to—that things can be better.
This year, togetherness is limited, but distance does not limit the gratitude we can carry for each other. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth a prayer we can echo today, “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:4).”
It may be an awkward Thanksgiving, but you can still pray thanksgiving over the family and friends in your life. You can still call and write and let them know you love and cherish them. This is a good chance to practice the habit of gratitude.
