Giving Thanks

My good friend and fellow blogger Susan Stocker recently wrote such a compelling perspective on Thanksgiving that I decided to share it. I hope her words expand your view of the holiday and helps you take another step toward Becoming Yourself (you can subscribe to Susan’s wonderful blog here).

Can you believe we are fortunate enough to live in a country which sets aside a special day for THANKSGIVING??? Maybe that is the first thing for which we might be thankful! Of the 195 countries on this earth, only 17 have a celebrated Thanksgiving.

In 1621, fifty-three Pilgrims entertained ninety indigenous people who had helped them adapt to a new world, plant crops, learn to fish for strange and different fish, grind meal, make unusual crops eatable, build dwellings, hunt wildlife and, put simply, survive. For three days this assembly celebrated, feasted and learned from each other although everything about them was different, from language to customs to which fork to use for which course — just kidding about the forks! 

Next year our Thanksgiving will be the four hundredth such celebration. 

We might suppose this holiday has lasted because it’s built around food and eating ourselves into a coma. (Actually, I think that might be a modern addition to the original intent.) We might also assume that the giving of thanks was to God. That does not seem to be strictly true, either. These Pilgrims were English separatists who were breaking away from the church. Nonetheless, while they were surely thanking God, they also felt a need to thank the native peoples who had helped them live long enough for a celebration.

I think they were giving thanks to the American Indians who, instead of killing them, had welcomed these strange foreigners although earlier groups of Pilgrims, who had returned to Europe, had apparently kidnapped some of the “Indians” and taken them along back to England as slaves. Despite that, the inhabitants of the land — Native Americans never believed in such a concept as “owning” land — shared not only the land but their knowledge of how to live in harmony with the land.

That’s my understanding of how this whole gratitude day got started — gratuitously. The Native peoples asked nothing in return. They welcomed the refugees. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” was the invitation offered to the Pilgrims. We’ll help you find a home here. We’ll show you how to acclimate. “Mi casa y su casa.” My house is your house; my home is your home. “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

My friends… what do you think? How have we done four hundred years later in retaining the spirit of the celebration?

Maybe there’s a real opportunity for us this year when we are encouraged not to gather in the same way with the same crowd of people with the same limp phrases on our lips. Clearly, we need to sit out a year or a century and see if we can realign ourselves with the original meaning of a day of giving thanks. Maybe we can figure out a way to share with those who are different, diverse, disadvantaged, and disheartened. What a chance to reassess and re-design. What a possibility. 

I can’t help but believe nothing would please that God of ours more. I know that many of us, as parents ourselves, not THE parent that God is, just A parent, are pleased more than in any other way by watching our children live in harmony, happiness, gratitude toward each other and thankfulness with and for each other. Here are my three posing for a picture for their (thankful) mother.

Love, Susan

Susan Stocker is a blogger, novelist, and Marriage and Family Therapist with Masters degrees in Communication and Counseling. She served as a mental health ambassador to China in 1998 and has volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, and many other organizations. Her published works include Only Her Naked Courage (2013), Heart 1.5 (2013), The Many Faces of Anxiety (2013), The Many Faces of PTSD (2010), and Heart (1981), as well as her blog The Many Faces of PTSD (manyfacesofptsd.wordpress.com). She is on a lifelong journey toward Becoming Herself. You can contact her at sraustocker@yahoo.com.