On Thursday, most of us will sit down with family and friends and celebrate Thanksgiving. Although the first Thanksgiving was celebrated almost 400 years ago (the autumn of 1621), it didn’t become a national holiday until 1863. Today, while ostensibly still a day of thanks, it has come to mark the beginning of the holiday season.
It long ago replaced Christmas as my favorite holiday. (While Christmas is most kid’s favorite holiday, it loses a lot of its luster once you stop believing.) Coming home from the football game to find the house filled with relatives and great aromas, needing a cup of hot chocolate to warm up, and knowing that a fabulous feast awaited was tough to beat.
High schools no longer play football games on Thanksgiving (at least not in my neck of the woods), but the rest is the same. Well, okay, I admit, the hot chocolate has been replaced by a good single malt.
Getting together with loved ones and giving pause to reflect on our good fortune is great, but it needn’t be limited to one special day a year and to many, it isn’t.
Observant Jews say a short prayer upon rising each morning, basically giving thanks for being alive. That’s great, but why should it be limited to just one religion? Everyone can be thankful for each day. All it takes is a little perspective.
We all have problems; that’s not the issue. It’s how we view the problem (perspective) and how we address it that counts. It has been said that if we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back, and that’s probably true.
We should never let our problems keep us from being thankful for our blessings. And that’s easiest accomplished by keeping our problems in perspective. Which shouldn’t be too hard because for most of us, our blessings dwarf our problems.
Happy Thanksgiving! And thanks for reading.