The Death of Thanksgiving

And Hope for its Revival

I was driving around where I live a few days after Halloween and noticed something: people had gone straight from Halloween yard decorations to Christmas ones. No one has put things up to celebrate Thanksgiving. I filed this observation away in the back of my mind and didn’t think much more about it until I went online to shop for some household items on a major retailer’s website. There, prominently displayed before you see anything else on the site, was a special “Halloween Store” and a “Christmas Store.” Thanksgiving was nowhere to be found. Thanksgiving, indeed, seems increasingly to be dying out as a meaningful American holiday.

What might account for this? Could it be that a holiday centered on giving thanks to God has fallen out of favor in a society obsessed with self and with material pleasures? Halloween, especially the celebration of the demented and depraved, has become much an increasingly prominent celebration, as Christmas becomes ever more focused on materialistic indulgence, and therefore more and more central to our lives for that very reason. The way these holidays are celebrated seems to match the ever more post-Christian ethos of our society. Thankfulness, which requires a God to be thankful to, does not fit the zeitgeist.

But thankfulness is at the very heart of the Christian faith. The Psalms, the songbook written to form the various range of expressions of Israel’s piety, is full of exhortations to God’s people to give thanks to him. Psalm 95 (vv. 1–2), which opens exhorting God’s people to give thanks to him, is instructive:

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
    let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
    let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

The Psalm then warns God’s people not to harden their hearts as Israel did in their wilderness wandering (vv. 8–11), thereby falling under God’s judgment and not entering the land of promise.

What was the nature of Israel’s sin? They grumbled against God because they were infecting by discontentment at God’s hard providence in bringing them into the land of promise through the difficulties and trials in the wilderness. Grumbling, at its core, is driven by a refusal to give thanks to God, no matter the circumstances. The author of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews applies Psalm 95 to his own readers, thus warning them (and us) of the perennial danger of grumbling against God when our lives do not turn out exactly as we had hoped.

The Apostle Paul even connects thanklessness with rebellious idolatry. After writing of how God has clearly revealed himself in the world he has made (Rom 1:19–20) he says that “although” all men

knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:21–23)

A refusal to give thanks to God, in other words, is at the heart of human rebellion against God. If you won’t give thanks to God for all the goodness he bestows on you, you’ll seek goodness and blessing elsewhere, in created things. You will become a worshiper of idols.

Little, then, could be more important in life than cultivating gratitude and thankfulness to God for his many blessings, the blessings of salvation and of constant earthly provision. As such, the death of Thanksgiving is not an auspicious sign.

Thanksgiving is not simply an important Christian response to God’s kindness and grace. It certainly is that, but it has historically been a vital part of American life. Its past centrality may even have been one of the many ways in which the connection between our nation and its Christian heritage has been preserved. And this may also very well be one reason Thanksgiving has fallen out of favor today: not only is somewhat difficult completely to commercialize and commodify a holiday founded on gratitude and thanksgiving, but many today would also love nothing more than to eliminate all memories and celebrations of America’s Christian past.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Thanksgiving: the sun shining brightly through the leafless trees, reflecting a golden light on the already dormant, yellow grass; the lengthy preparation of the meal at my grandparents’ house; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning; the UT-Texas A&M football game in the afternoon. I always had the sense growing up that Thanksgiving was a time to celebrate family, America, and God’s many blessings, and to have a blast doing it. I wasn’t even a Christian then, yet I can see now how God was blessing me in those days by means of the goodness that was still preserved in our traditions and a culture that supported them, rather than seeking to destroy them.

Maybe one day soon, through the efforts of our new President and many others, the Macy’s Parade will no longer be the grotesque celebration of depravity it has become, and I’ll be able to enjoy it with my children, as I enjoyed it as a child. Or perhaps any grandchildren the Lord blesses me with may live to see that day. Regardless, I will do what I can to keep Thanksgiving central in the life of my family, Thanksgiving as a holiday and as the constant orientation of my heart. I have so much to be thankful for: a God who loves me; a family who does the same; a church that looks out for my spiritual well-being; great friends; a great job; a great place to live; a great nation to live in, despite its flaws; and so much more.

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Image Credit: Unsplash

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