As the years have passed by, I have learned the truth about Thanksgiving, and the truth is powerful and has nothing to do with aiding farmers. It is a celebration that dates back to our founding but was not always a constant tradition. It was first introduced during the Revolutionary War, not as a continuous holiday but just as a single day of thanks and humiliation. We had several of those days. After the Revolutionary period we got out of practice until war ragged across this country in a way that is and was unparallelled in the Civil War. President Lincoln established a similar day. Later still, in the middle of the war he established a permanent holiday.
In the midst of terrible war, people could see the hand of God all around them and felt a need to thank the Almighty for the blessings that abounded all around them. I see that in my own life as well. I have never been more grateful for my health than at the moments that it appears that it might be taken from me. I have never been more grateful for my toes than at the moment I nearly lost one.
Abraham Lincoln had the right Idea. Instead of just making it a one and your done event, he had the wisdom to make it a holiday. You see, it was not just about gratitude but also about humiliation. Not that I think they meant that you needed someone to ridicule you in the public square, but that you needed to humble yourself. In the middle of these conflicts, the leaders believed that the we as a people needed to humble ourselves if we were going to be victorious. We needed to realize that by ourselves we are nothing. We need God and our brothers to be great. Lincoln, though, knew that we would need this in peace time as well. So he made it a permanent holiday.
We have a choice, we can chose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble, but what does it mean to be humble. Does it mean that we think we have no worth? Nothing to add to society? No, these would deny the talents that God has given us and the inborn worth of being spiritual children of an Almighty Father God.
To me being humble isn't about denying our talents or worth, just acknowledging that all of them come from an Almighty God. They are gifts, and all honor belong to the magnificent being who bestows them, not upon the vessel upon whom they are bestowed.
As we celebrate thanksgiving in the future let's not forget the humiliation element. We have to keep ourselves humble and always look to the source of truth and light.