The Eve of Thanksgiving: A Reflection
By The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton
Thanksgiving is a truly "catholic" celebration. That is, it is a great American festival that is universal and meaningful to all, which is the meaning of the word catholic. All Americans, those who consider themselves religious and those who do not, seem to enjoy this annual autumn celebration. It can be a great time to gather with the extended members of one’s family, partake in a delicious home cooked meal, watch a football game or parade on television and savor the simple pleasures of life.
We must admit that for many Americans Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for what they themselves have accomplished, such as earning more money or obtaining a better job. Or they are grateful to "fate" because they have escaped the violence of Hurricane Lili, war, murderers and snipers. Others who have experienced great suffering and death in their families, learned they have a terminal illness, endured divorce or lost their employment this year may sincerely ask what do they have to be thankful for. They may feel abandoned by God.
The majority of Americans who believe in God (in many different faith traditions, including Christians) think of this as a day to be thankful to God for the gift of life’s simple pleasures, even if they do not say a prayer or enter a house of worship. Many Catholics, like those of other faiths, pray special prayers at home or in their churches on this day. Of course Catholics and other Christians who commemorate the Lord’s Supper and celebrate a eucharistic liturgy are aware that the very word eucharist comes from the Greek word which means "to give thanks." Every day that we give thanks to God by participating prayerfully in the eucharist is "thanksgiving day" in the deepest meaning of the words. This is why Thanksgiving is not only a catholic celebration of all U.S. citizens but also a Catholic celebration for members of the Church. This is obvious from the numbers of Catholics who faithfully participate in the Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day, even though it is a civil holiday and not a Church Holy Day. Yet, in some parishes more Catholics are at Mass on Thanksgiving than on designated Holy Days.
The celebration of Thanksgiving as we know it is a relatively recent and gradual development. In 1780 the Protestant Episcopal Church proclaimed the first Thursday in November a day for giving thanks to God. When the Revolutionary War finally ended, President George Washington designated Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a day of "public thanksgiving for the many favors of Almighty God." New York State began its observance in 1817. Documents suggest that as many as 28 states had some form of Thanksgiving commemoration by 1859. However, it did not become a national day of "praise to our beneficent Father" until Abraham Lincoln so designated the last Thursday in November in 1863. By 1939 the commercialization of Christmas prompted President Roosevelt to move the observance one week earlier to the fourth Thursday of November so that businesses could lengthen the shopping days before Christmas. It became a federal holiday in 1941. (An unintended and indirect consequence of this is the fact it is almost impossible for Catholics to prayerfully celebrate the renewing season of Advent surrounded by Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving.)
While the "tradition" of regularly celebrating Thanksgiving did not get underway until 1780, most of us associate this fall festival with the arrival of European pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower fleeing religious persecution and looking for a new home, they landed on November 21 with little to live on. Perhaps half of the one hundred settlers died the first year. They were welcomed by Governor William Bradford. Though popular history books may have romanticized the early relationship between the Native peoples and the settlers, we do know that Squanto, a Wampanoag taught them the many uses of corn and how to hunt and fish in a strange land.
Most of us whose ideas were formed by Hollywood portrayals of "cowboys and Indians" are ignorant of authentic native American customs. They had their own ways of giving thanks. As Olyshaa, a Santee Dakota physician wrote in 1911, "In our lives there is only one inevitable duty -- the duty of prayer, the daily recognition of the unseen and eternal. Whenever in the course of the daily hunt, the Red Hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful or sublime (a black thundercloud with the rainbow’s glowing arch above the mountain, a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge, a vast prairie tinged with the blue-red of sunset) he pauses for an instant in an attitude of worship. No need to call one day in seven "holy" since all days come from the Great Spirit."
Governor Bradford called for a day of thanks to God for the survival of the new settlers. Some accounts say sixty pilgrims and ninety Native Americans participated. This "day of thanksgiving" idea was popular in the New England colonies, but it did not become an annual tradition. (You might be surprised to know that even earlier, on December 4, 1619, a small group of English settlers at the Berkeley plantation in Virginia had a day of thanksgiving for their safe voyage across the dangerous ocean.)
Of course, English Catholics also came to this "new world" when they were forbidden to practice their faith. One third of the 300 colonists who landed at St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634 to establish the community of Maryland (named for the Mother of Jesus) were Catholics. A Jesuit priest, Fr. Andrew White, celebrated the Eucharist, (the supreme act of Thanksgiving) perhaps the first Mass in the colonies, in a community committed to religious freedom.
All of these early Christian celebrations almost certainly took much of their inspiration from the Jewish celebrations in the Old Testament. Pilgrims familiar with Scripture would have known the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. This mid-October (the 15th of Tishri) celebration is at the end of the harvest season, five days after the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). During these days faithful Jewish people to this day meditate on God’s saving power in their history, recalling their Exodus from slavery in Egypt, through the desert, escaping the Pharaoh’s chariots in the Red Sea and their deliverance in the Promised Land. They offer fresh wine and the fruit of the land in their sanctuaries, giving thanks to God for watching over them and for his promise to care for them as His chosen people. This theme is echoed in the special Thanksgiving Day Preface used in Masses in the United States. (While this Preface sadly does not reflect the experience of Africans who were not fleeing persecution but were being persecuted, brought to this country in chains and slavery, it does reflect the hope of all who long for freedom.)
"Once you chose a people and gave them a destiny
and, when you brought them out of bondage to freedom,
they carried with them the promise that all people would be blessed
and all could be free.
It happened to our fathers and mothers, who came to this land as if out of a desert into a place of promise and hope. It happens to us still, in our time,
As you lead all people through your Church to the blessed vision of peace."
Unfortunately, most people do not think about any of these things. Thanksgiving is just a "holiday." But we could think about them! As you and your family enjoy the turkey with all the trimmings on Thanksgiving Day, be sure to savor to the fullest birdsong, flowersmell, skycolor, and herbtaste. Remember that it is not ourselves that we are thanking. Nor is it science, technology, money or any other "god" of our own making. We are giving thanks to the God who is God. We are giving thanks to the God who has given us His Son, Jesus Christ who has given us Himself, His Body and Blood in that perfect act of Thanksgiving - The Eucharist!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!