Thanksgiving Cancelled This Year!

Is your Thanksgiving cancelled this year? According to a recent survey, about one-fourth of Americans will not celebrate Thanksgiving this year. There are at least two issues to consider here: ostensible reasons for ignoring the holiday, and more broadly, our need to be thankful.

Roots of Thanksgiving Day

We can trace the roots of the traditional Thanksgiving Day tradition in the US to as far back as 1621 when the colonists at Plymouth and the Wampanoag people shared a feast to celebrate the harvest and other blessings of the year. The American celebration of thanksgiving continued in one form or another until 1863 when President Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. Over the years, it’s been a day to gather with family and friends, share a meal, enjoy each other’s company and be thankful for our gifts and blessings.

Thanksgiving Day Cancelled Due to Costs

This tradition may be about to take a nosedive, though. One reason given for not celebrating Thanksgiving Day this year is the increased cost to do so. For example, the average retail price of turkey is 73% higher than last year. Other grocery staples have increased substantially as well. On the face of it, finding a way to cut back on costs can make some sense.

Yet, on the fourth Thursday of November, most people will partake of a lunch or dinner meal anyway. It may comprise dishes outside the scope of traditional Thanksgiving Day meals, but it will be a meal nonetheless. So why not gather together and share, even sharing the costs by making it a potluck, rather than having Thanksgiving cancelled? There could be something more behind these Thanksgiving cancellations than simply cutting costs.

Thanksgiving Day Cancelled Due to Lack of Faith

What else might be going on in the trend to see Thanksgiving cancelled? Well, consider that Gen-Zers are the most likely to suggest having Thanksgiving cancelled according to the survey cited above. As well, they’re also the least religiously affiliated generation. Might there be a connection here? Research studies indicate that spirituality or religious faith and beliefs can have a bearing on one’s gratitude. If one doesn’t believe in God or have a relationship with Him, how can one have gratitude to Him for much of anything?

Thanksgiving Day began as a day to give thanks. So, if giving thanks is not so important, then the day itself just becomes another day. Or, at best, it’s becomes a day to get together and watch football games, maybe spend time with family and friends and, perhaps over-indulge. One might hazard a guess that, at many gatherings, nary a word of thanksgiving is said as the crowd dives into the meal. Quite simply, over the years, the religious nature of America’s Thanksgiving Day holiday has faded. Emphasis on giving thanks–on gratitude–within or outside the holiday has fallen off as well.

Importance of Gratitude

And just how important is one’s gratitude? We really need to give thanks continually, to develop “an attitude of gratitude,” as the maxim goes. Regardless of economic conditions or other tribulations, we need to be grateful to our awesome God. Without Him, we’re nothing, we’ve got nothing, we wouldn’t even be here. Without Him, and His amazing love, we would not exist. And, without His love for us that’s so great He sent His son to die for us, we wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of redemption. We can’t redeem ourselves. Everything we have, including our talents and abilities, come from Him. So, we owe a debt, essentially an unrepayable debt, of gratitude to the Sovereign of the Universe.

God Asks Us to Give Him Thanks

We see gratitude mentioned throughout Scripture, including the Psalms. God gave us the Psalms as inspired Scripture, as prayers for us to pray to Him. Just a few examples follow:

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High – Psalm 50:14 

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever – Psalm 118:1 

I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving – Psalm 69:30

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name! – Psalm 100:4 

Gratitude is something that the Lord actually asks us to give Him in prayer. But why? Not because He needs it. He needs nothing. We’re the ones who need it.

Gratitude Is a Virtue

Growing in gratitude helps us grow closer to God. Gratitude is a virtue, under the virtue of justice, which involves giving others their due. The object of gratitude is a return in some way to a benefactor who has given us something to which we had no right. And who’s given us more than our great and gracious God? We ought to strive for growth in the virtue of gratitude. Growth in any one virtue helps us grow in other virtues as well. In turn, this moves us closer to union with God. Becoming one with Him should be our ultimate goal, should it not?

Benefits of Gratitude

Being grateful is good for us in other ways as well. Frustrated, about something? Anxious about something else? Angry or agitated about someone or their behavior? Give thanks to the Lord! Living in the sacrament of the present moment, with gratitude for what Our Lord presents, helps overcome frustration, anxiety, anger and agitation. Just ask Fr. Jacques Phillippe.

In his book, Called to Life, Father Phillippe makes the point that, if we are bitter and resentful about our life not meeting our expectations, we will be deeply disillusioned. But, if we thank God for whatever we encounter, we will be overwhelmed by His generosity. In fact, he states that living in a state of gratitude is the most powerful way to purify our heart and open it to the divine action of God. And who wouldn’t want that?

Cultivating Gratitude

If the thought of growing in gratitude intrigues you, consider the following suggestions.

• Pray with Scripture, including the Psalms. Fr. Timothy Gallagher gives suggestions on how to pray the Psalms more fruitfully in his discussion of the Liturgy of the Hours.
• Conduct a daily examen. It’s a method of reviewing your day, at day’s end. As you begin your review of the day, you recall the blessings you received and give thanks for them.
• Take stock throughout the day of events, people and circumstances to be thankful for, beginning with awakening in the morning–“Thank You, Lord, for the gift of life this day!”
• Be thankful about things you’ve been taking for granted–food, transportation, health, family, friends, creation, the wherewithal to experience creation this day, etc.
• Express your gratitude in the moment, to God, and to others for their thoughtfulness and help. In this day and age, simply saying, “Thank you” may give someone a pleasant surprise.
• Consider that, in God’s active and passive will, some things happen that don’t appear to be blessings to our natural eyes and understanding. But consider them as Romans 8:28 moments and give God thanks for them, even if it’s hard to understand what’s going on and why. Offer up any suffering with Jesus Christ crucified as redemptive suffering. Even when things aren’t going well, take the advice of a friend of mine. She considers whatever she’s enduring as nothing compared to what others face, and she can be thankful for that.

No matter how you plan to spend any day of any year, always give thanks to the Lord, for His merciful love–his steadfast, amazing love for you–endures forever! Now that’s something worth taking to prayer.

“Remember the past with gratitude.  Live the present with enthusiasm.  Look forward to the future with confidence.” –St. John Paul II