The first Christmas items went up for sale about one week
before Halloween this year. I guess you have to forgive the craft store for the
early date as they were trying to give people a chance to have homemade gifts
ready before December 25, even earlier if things had to be mailed. Regardless,
the displays served as a warning that the mad rush was about to begin. Get your
calendars out, your notepads in hand, and your credit cards ready. The season
for saving the American economy has arrived.
Before we get to December 25th, however, we come
to November 22, the date in 2012 set aside for Thanksgiving Day, Turkey Day, or
Eat-Too-Much-And-Fall-Asleep-On-the-Couch-Watching-Football-or-It’s-a-Wonderful-Life
Day. From the Puritan point of view this day was never to have a religious
foundation, the result of a rejection of too many Catholic holidays that
required church attendance. Thus in America from its earliest days this special
day was kept separate from Sabbath identification. Don’t you just love Wikipedia?
That same source relates that various groups and colonies
had their own days of thanksgiving on a variety of dates and for a variety of
reasons. George Washington in 1789 called for the first national Day of
Thanksgiving. The independent celebrations continued for another 75 years until
Abraham Lincoln established the last Thursday in November as a national
holiday. For some unknown reason Franklin Roosevelt felt it necessary to change
the date to the fourth Thursday of that month. So we have the familiar date
that all of America recognizes today.
I will celebrate it by spending the day with my wife, two
sons and daughter-in-law. I will also have the blessing of spending that same time
with my son’s in-laws whom I find most enjoyable. It will be a day of
strengthening family ties, enjoying the bounty of a year’s hard work, and taking
the time to stop the mad rush into the Christmas season, feel the blessings
flow around me, and give thanks to the One who has made it all possible. I join a nice crowd in doing that (Psalms 92, 107, 136, etc & Jesus-Mark 8:6; a Samaritan-Luke 17:16; Paul-Ephesians 5:20, etc)
Somewhere there is a computer that can do more than thirty
trillion calculations in less than a billionth of a second or some ridiculous
number like that (actually it’s name is Sequoia and it lives at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California where its speed is in the quadrillions
of calculations per second-Fox News). I can only assume that someone needs a
computer that fast.
As for me I have found you can get a lot of serious reading
done while waiting for your computer to pull up a large file or work through a
search. Sometimes it is not a waste of time to be quiet and feel your heart
beat over a period of five or ten seconds. It can be a reassurance
that you are still connected to life. Upon occasion you need to stop, feel
life, and whisper a word of thanksgiving.
On Thanksgiving Day I intend to sit a lot, eat a lot, smile
a lot, and try to remember to offer thanks a lot. I will thank my God for a
wife who has put up with me for over 35 years. I will thank God for two sons
who will run into my arms even when my hands are empty. I will thank God for a
beautiful girl who dared to become a member of the Lamkin family. I will thank
God for extended family, friends, and opportunities in a free country, still
the greatest place on earth to live. I will stop, feel, and thank God for the
greatest gift of all, his Son Jesus Christ, who taught me how to love without caring
what someone deserves. Because I didn’t deserve his.
