The Thanksgiving Exchange

Our country’s original expression of “thankgiving” during this holiday season once led to to worshipful expressions such as these:

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.

William Bradford, the first Thanksgiving Day Proclamation [1] (1623)

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

George Washington, The First Presidential Thanksgiving Day Proclamation (October 3, 1789)

But now, people’s hearts and minds don’t turn upward to the Creator, they turn downward to the creation, in a strange realization of that Romans 1:24-25 exchange. Turn on the TV and you’ll see that we’ve turned Thanksgiving from a holiday of worship to a celebration of gluttony (i.e. worshipping food) and a pursuit of meaningless recreation (e.g. football). Lord, help me to not exchange your gifts for you, yourself, as the object of my adoration.