Once again it’s that time of year when we rush to grab the fattest Butterball, the biggest pumpkin pie, go berserk trying to outdo our relatives over who can make the best award winning stuffing this year since last year’s by cousin Liz was a bomb even though we told her it was fabulous while secretly reaching for Pepto Bismal. Every year we become maniac’s over
who can out do who on the best apple pie, complain about the fact Aunt Martha is visiting this year and who gets to “take her” for the week while others drone on and on about how they wish their parents would move to Florida and never migrate for the holidays.

Most spend the next month and half complaining that they hate holidays all the while spending money on tacky décor they insist on having to impress those family members they hate.

Yes, it’s that time of year to celebrate Thanksgiving by acting like a bunch of ungrateful spoiled bastards who consider starvation and deprivation going without imported goose liver pate and fabulous little crackers to spread the mashed organs upon during hors d’oeuvre hour.

Don’t you just love the holidays; especially when it brings out the brat in people?

Last year, the news channels reported Europeans migrate every Christmas holiday to the U.S. in droves for the most fascinating spectacle—watching Americans shop and spend. Apparently our overindulgence for horrifically tacky do-dads we would never buy any other time of year fascinates Europeans to the point they actually pay airfare money to watch us Yanks turn into manic mental shopaholic morons.

The sad embarrassing fact is Europeans are not flying here to watch us enter church and give thanks and feed the poor; they want to watch the spend-for-all which includes prize fighting knock-outs in department stores over ugly fashion.

And all our ancestors wanted was freedom and to thank God.

I personally adore the holidays. I love everything about them with the exception of the commercialization created by anti-holiday Atheists who love celebrating the money aspect of the holidays. But they are the minority in America, so to hell with them. I’ll be blasting the Christmas music, breaking out the pinecones for wreath making, pumpkins for the table centerpieces, and Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving while thinking about the fact I have a lot to be thankful for.

I’m alive, I have a family and friends who love me, and I live in the best country on earth. I have no complaints. Too many snots needing a good ass-whipping are complaining and forgetting why we celebrate a day called Thanksgiving and to whom we should be thankful—God.

Our founders knew the meaning of thankful. They struggled to forge a land out of wilderness while starving, freezing, and dieing so we could eat like there’s no tomorrow, and then complain about what the scales reads the next day.

Thanksgiving was not a holiday in 1621; it was a religious feast of thanksgiving to God who spared the lives of half the Mayflower passengers who survived a brutal Cape Cod winter without food and warmth. The Pilgrims and Wampanoag’s did not spend the day singing and dancing, which was considered ungodly to the religious Pilgrims. Pilgrims and Wampanoag spent their thanksgiving attending church for three days. Those days were designated days between September 21 and November 11; the days of Thanksgiving. Two years later, because of droughts, fasting was added to the three days of prayers for blessings upon the people (History.com).

Three days of church, prayer and fasting would never be allowed by today’s ACLU standards. The fact Wampanoags shared the belief of thanking God would be considered racist toward Indians by today’s secularists who would say Bradford and Winslow forced Christian conversion on the tribe. The fact is Squanto and his people did partake in the three days of prayer and sharing Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims to the dying day of every Mayflower passenger and Wampanoag of that generation (history.com).

In those early days of our founding there were no Stop and Shop’s or COSTCO’s to pile food into wagons for immense feasts of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yam and marshmallow pudding, hasty pudding, cornbread, pumpkin pies, cranberry breads, Succotash, and an assortment of desserts fit for a king. A Pilgrim Thanksgiving was whatever could be caught in a trap, grabbed out of the bay and speared with an arrow or shot with a musket. And if it was eatable, it was pulled out of the wild earth and boiled. And everyone was thankful because it meant another day less hungry.

There was no such thing as “Black Friday.” That conception was invented by department stores that don’t care about our history; they want your money, not caring what how they con you into buying so impress your loved ones as long as you spend, spend and spend until the bank forces you to cut your credit cards.

I often wonder what would happen if today’s America was transported back in time to William Bradford’s Cape Cod with brutal winters worrying where the next meal would come from to feed one’s children. Survival was of utmost importance; there was no keeping up with the Winslow’s and Alden’s; Pilgrims looked to God as the only answer to their needs. They were people who left everything behind, including civilization, to found a nation based on God.

The Pilgrims did not arrive with furniture as assumed; they had trunks with few goods and not much food for travel. They had to hand over their butter cargo—protein—to the king as payment to sail. They were left with salted fish and barreled water which went stale after a week on the high seas.

Not one person arrived with money or any form of wealth. Friends and family were three thousand miles away in England never to be seen again. The Pilgrims were poor people in a foreign land with no towns; only desolation. The blessing came in the form of Squanto and the Wampanoag’s who befriended the foreigners, helping them survive. This was the true gift of the first thanksgiving—friendship and love.

Often the concept of Thanksgiving’s true meaning is forgotten. We spend more time focusing elaborate feasts and what time of the early morning to park our vehicles outside the shopping malls on Black Friday.

The mad dash for whatever Wall Street tells us to purchase consumes our every waking moment until we run for those mall doors, knocking over everyone in our way, fighting over hideous looking sweaters we would never purchase under normal reasoning—(we’re not normal on Black Friday, we’re psychotic with paranoia over tacky present purchasing)—ripping cloths off racks, leaving them for the sales girls we have no respect for at that moment to pick up; yelling at people to get out of the way, complaining there are never enough cashiers when you need one, babies screaming because mothers care more about buying disgusting gifts their husbands will be forced to endure the wearing off, and the continued complaining over the fact parents are not going home for three more days.

We’ve become the generation of secularization and we don’t care.

As I stated above; I love the holidays. I love going to church in the morning for the holiday sermon and thanking God for everything he does for me. I love the day spent with family preparing the dinner together. In my family everyone chips in with whatever they want to cook and we have a great time doing it, even when the dog jumps up on the counter, pulls a pie down and runs through the house with the pie with everyone chasing him. My family watches the parade and Miracle On 34th Street—the Maureen O’Hara version; we watch football games shouting and cheering like banshees—my brothers and cousins are usually on top of a sofa screaming GO! GO! GO! while the dog steals something else and runs through the house with my mother and me chasing and calling him names—in a very nice talk-to-doggie-tone of course if we want the cranberry bread back.

When it’s time to eat, all gazillian of us—that includes friends without family we refuse to leave alone on holidays—squeeze in, hold hands and thank God we’re together. Then we eat while everyone out talks everyone else telling hilarious family Thanksgiving stories leaving everyone screaming with laughter year after year—like the true story of how Grandpa forgot to hunt the turkey one year, got Grandma’s pet goose that wore bonnets instead, disguised it as a turkey, let everyone eat it until Grandma went looking for her pet goose to feed it “din dins” and the truth came out. So did a cast iron pan chasing a man’s head around the house.

So many people look at holidays as drudgery: the awful task of spending time with family. They forget some people don’t have family. They forget there are American children living in orphanages who would give anything to have a family and know the feeling of family holidays.

People who hate holidays and dread family need to be homeless on the streets during those times experiencing true despair. To have a mother and father is a blessing. I understand there are horrible parents out there and their children have suffered. Those children wish to seek comfort in the homes of friends who love family and holidays. Those children know what it truly is to be thankful—to survive another day without abuse.

Selfish people, who simply complain because their mother annoys them, their family annoys them, their father is a grouch, etc, need a good whipping. If family life is so bad, volunteer at women’s shelters and see how some people are forced to run with their children to stay alive. Those women are thankful to have a Thanksgiving without violence.

Visit an AID’s hospice where this might be the last Thanksgiving for AIDs victims. Their families refuse to have anything to do with them because they have AIDS. Visit a retirement home where some elderly have no family left and nothing but memories to keep them going.

And don’t forget our troops fighting for our lives. We have Thanksgiving because they keep America safe. Pray for them.

We have so much to be thankful for in America. We have everything materially we could ever hope for. But those are intangible things that hold little value compared to the value of family and friends. Family is valuable, friendship is valuable, what we receive on our plate should be received gratefully. Some people will go hungry this week; some will be without loved ones; some may no longer be with us; some will die in battle for us. We must put our priorities in the proper place and be thankful for everything holiday we have with loved ones.

Thanksgiving is not about a stuffed Butterball and pumpkin pie; it’s about thanking God for our lives he gave himself for.

Happy Thanksgiving and God Bless to all;

Lisa Richards

copyright 2007 Lisa Richards
www.lisa-richards.com
lisa-richards@lisa-richards.com