By D. Scott Phillips

Thanksgiving is an attitude, not a day.  I learned this at a young age. My grandparents were not fans of harsh, Michigan winters, so they would jump ship around the end of November and travel to Florida for a few weeks of sunny vacationing. This meant that our family Thanksgiving was always the first Sunday of November.  I wish I could say that this gave me some profound insight into how Thanksgiving transcends any particular day. But I can’t. I was a supremely selfish, and somewhat spoiled, brat. It’s only recently that I’ve started to understand the real heart of thanksgiving. And I still struggle with the attitude.

Our forefathers understood this same tension.

The first Thanksgiving was a spontaneous act of worship that occurred in 1619 at the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. Shortly after, the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving in 1623, following a drought, prayer for rain, and a subsequent rain shower. Did you know that Thanksgiving has only been an annual occurrence since 1863? President Lincoln held a day of Thanksgiving during the middle of the Civil War (a man of faith, to give thanks under such circumstances); he did so because of the pressure put on him by Sarah Joseph Hale (the writer who gave us “Mary Had A Little Lamb). And it has only been since 1941 that Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on the same day (4th Thursday in November), when Congress passed a bill making the observance of thanks into a federal law. Historically, days of thanksgiving came and went, as they were demonstrations of how God miraculously provided for His people.

What I asked myself, as I researched this peculiar holiday, was how it went from spontaneous worship (and a day of fasting and repentance, as we shall see later) into a day of commercialism (Black Friday, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade), entertainment (Lions’ football, X-Files marathons), and a day of buffet-style gluttony with one’s family.

To understand this transition, we’ve got to cut the trim and get back to our roots.

The first Thanksgiving worshippers were farmers, and the first Thanksgivings were harvest feasts. The 1700’s were filled with random “days of thanksgiving” – in honor of military victories, the adoption of state constitutions, or an exceptionally bountiful crop. These days of thanksgiving were situational, communal, and God glorifying: filled with praise, repentance, and prayer. Sometimes they included feasting - like the Pilgrims - often they were days of prayer and fasting (e.g. most Thanksgivings during the 18th century).

Congress declared the first national Thanksgiving in 1777. And there are some significant differences between that first national Thanksgiving, and the present ones. In Congress’ proclamation:
  -God is mentioned 12 times
  -Christ is mentioned once
  -the Holy Spirit is mentioned once
  -the nation is instructed to “repent of sin that forfeits God’s favor”
  -God is asked to take “schools and colleges under His hand”

12 years later, George Washington created the first Thanksgiving designated by the United States of America.

His proclamation:
  -points to God explicitly
  -expresses gratefulness to God for His protection and ability to create a self-governing nation
  -calls God “the great Lord and Ruler of Nations”
  -asks God to “pardon our national and other transgressions”
  -exhorts the nation “to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue”

Then we’ve got 1798, 1799, and 1814 (celebrated twice that year), years where days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout the newly formed United States, though none of them occurred in autumn.

These random days of thanks continued until Abraham Lincoln made them an annual occurrence in 1863, proclaiming a day of thanks during the chaotic years of the Civil War. He reminded the nation that, “God was dealing with us in anger for our sins, but nonetheless remembering mercy.” This was the flavor of Thanksgiving until Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.

In 1939 and 1940, FDR had a crisis on his hands, a little something called the Great Depression (not so foreign to us, given the current economic bailout), and he came up with a brilliant solution: He would change the observance of Thanksgiving from the final Thursday of the month, to the third Thursday, giving merchants an extra week to sell their stuff before Christmas. This means that we have FDR to thank for that tasteless (and it was tasteless in his own day, too) tradition of Christmas advertising that bombards us from Halloween to Christmas Eve. FDR may not have pushed it back to November 1st, but he certainly gave the marketing “ball” a good, hard shove.

Of course, it would be easy to blame FDR, but that would be as silly as blaming New York City, who brought us the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924. Or as silly as blaming the NFL who has been playing games on Thanksgiving since its inception in 1920. Commercialism and entertainment became the focus of Thanksgiving long before FDR demonstrated it from the White House.

Our own generation has seen a rapid collapse into absurdity.  2003 marked the first year that a president pardoned 2 nationally recognized turkeys (sadly, I am not joking). The White House decided to allow visitors to vote on the names for 2 lucky turkeys that would be pardoned by the President on Thanksgiving Day (I can only assume it is some strange parody of the high priest’s responsibility to pardon the sins of Israel).  The winners in 2003 were “Stars” and “Stripes” who were pardoned by President Bush during a humorous event in the Rose Garden. In fairness to President Bush, he does mention our country’s great tradition, our great responsibility, and our great history as a nation blessed by God. But lacking in his speech was the passionate acknowledgement of God’s providing hand, and a deep-felt sorrow over the sins of our nation, or a call to confession and repentance.

This change in focus, from FDR to our generation, is why I believe we need to take a step back and remember what Thanksgiving is really about.

I said earlier that the first Thanksgiving worshippers were farmers who worshipped during harvest feasts. Some of us may have lost the ability to connect with them, being that most of us aren’t farmers.  We don’t know what it is to pray for rain, to worry about locusts, or to watch as our labor is devoured by wild animals, destroyed in floods, and choked by the weeds of life… Or do we? Maybe we know more than we think we know. We may not know the toil of working clay-ridden earth, but we know the despair when our dreams don’t take root. We may not experience drought, but that doesn’t mean we are void of need. We need God to be as faithful to us as He was to our forefathers. And then we can ask: For what can we give thanks? And how will we show it?

The Scriptures are replete with examples of God’s faithfulness, and His children’s response:
  -Noah gave thanks to God for taking away the floodwaters, and he built an altar (Genesis 8:20).
  -Abraham gave thanks for God’s promises, and he built an altar (Genesis 12:7).
  -Isaac gave thanks when God appeared to him, and he placed a memorial stone (Genesis 26:25).
  -Jacob did the same (Genesis 28:18).

God has been faithful to His children, and they have found spontaneous (though not always original) ways of showing it. But herein lies my concern for us:

I think that the tradition of Thanksgiving has become more like the snake pole of Numbers 21:5-9. The people of Israel grumbled against God, He sent poisonous snakes to kill them; the people cried out, Moses asked God to show mercy; God told Moses to build a snake pole, and the people were saved. Then many years went by, and we discover in 2 Kings 18:4 that the people of Israel had taken the good thing (the snake pole), and turned it into an idol. It became so bad that King Hezekiah “destroyed it because the people of Israel had been offering sacrifices to it.” What was the father’s altar (memorial) became the children’s shrine (idol).

Thanksgiving is not a day.
If it has only been a holiday, a day off, or another paid vacation to spend watching television, or eating too much food - I challenge all of us to check our hearts, crush our idols, and find ways (original or not) to demonstrate how God has been faithful. 

Thanksgiving is an attitude.
It is a heart and a life that seeks after Christ, and rejoices when He shows himself faithful. Thanksgiving is about spontaneous acts of worship, and about seeking to glorify God in a community that rejoices in God’s guidance, in God’s bounty, and in God’s victories.

Thanksgiving With Us:
If you are looking for a way to express thanksgiving, you can join your church family for a night of prayer, worship, and feasting on Wednesday, November 26th, starting at 6:30pm.

[D.Scott Phillips has to give thanks to the wikipedia article that made his own possible:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States) ]