2015 - Where Has Thanks-Giving Gone?

This year more than ever before, I am noticing a disturbing phenomenon. We seem to have forgotten about Thanksgiving, store shelves are stacked for Christmas and Black Friday now starts on Thursday morning.

We misplaced our Thanksgiving tablecloth. After checking with everyone in the family we determined – it simply vanished.

I ran out to look for a suitable replacement - a nice fall-like tablecloth that could be used for both Sukkot and Thanksgiving. The stores we visited were filled with Christmas tablecloths, a few Chanukah patterns but NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING for Thanksgiving!

Besides being upset about not finding a tablecloth, I am saddened by what I am seeing. Thanksgiving, the most widely celebrated holiday in the United States, the day in which we take a moment as a nation to give thanks for the many blessings we have. The one holiday where we come together with family and friends and sit down for a meal, one that is not connected to any religious, spiritual, or political beliefs, with no pressure to exchange gifts – is vanishing.

The extent of this phenomenon is even more visible now that stores are opening their doors for shopping ON Thanksgiving. Making Thanksgiving seem as just a delay to the start of Black Friday deals.

What would happen if we as a society openly stood up against this?

If we didn’t go shopping on Thanksgiving?  

If we still took this time to show our gratitude?

To sit with family and friends and be grateful – to the God of our understanding or to life in general?

To notice the plethora we have and be thankful for it?

To let go of the commercialism and the craze of what comes next?

And to sit in what is now, THANKS - GIVING and be grateful?

This morning my partner and I went for a walk and gathered beautiful fall leaves. We then had our 5-year-old adopted grandchild place red, yellow, green and brown leaves under each glass plate on the table. We are using a tablecloth we inherited from my friend’s mother.  It is absolutely beautiful! I am thankful we had the opportunity to look at what nature provided us and be grateful for it. We chose gratitude for what we already have over the impulse to buy yet another item.

I bless us all with a wonderful Thanksgiving, one that is filled with gratitude – for nature, for family present and far with a return to simplicity and a rejection of the over commercialization of life; and the ability to see opportunities for gratitude in every potential crisis.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chani

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