My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. The reasons vary.
For one, most people seem to have something within themselves that values gratitude, be they religious or not. In other words, compared to Christmas, for example, Thanksgiving is a notably less sectarian holiday.
Thanksgiving also seems less stressful. But then I’m not the one doing the cooking. Nor traveling. I’m remembering at least one stressful “trip home” at Thanksgiving. But that was years ago. Typically, for me at least, Thanksgiving is a more relaxing holiday.
Again, compared to Christmas at least, Thanksgiving is a less costly affair. For most of us, I suspect, the (too often too much) money spent on Christmas begins, instead, after Thanksgiving.
I even like the less garish and lavish decorating associated with Thanksgiving, the subtle earth tones of seasonal brown and orange associated with Fall.
For me, I suppose, the only downside of Thanksgiving is my proclivity toward the sins of sloth and gluttony.
But back to the business of gratitude. Since I’m, unapologetically, a sincerely committed religious person–in my case, Christian faith–I continue to maintain cordial disagreement with my ostensibly secular friends regarding the source of being thankful. My claim being that thankfulness, even from a so-called secular perspective, owes more to certain religious values, however implicit, which permeate the culture most of us share, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Whereas my thoroughly secular friends have been known to reply, “What’s gratitude have to do with God?”
From an explicit Christian perspective, however, thanksgiving springs from what, in my view, is the most important word in the Bible.
It’s the Greek word, charis, found extensively in the New Testament, which is translated into three different English words: charis means “grace”; charis-ma means “gift”; and eu-charist means “gratitude.”
A Christian understanding of “grace” (charis) refers to that loving presence who God is; indeed, a gift (charis-ma) extended unconditionally to everyone. In other words, that transcendent personal love in whom all of life rests–un-deserved and never earned–only received with gratitude (eu-charist).
And since Christian faith is always incarnated relationally, in community, even though none of us can ever love anyone, even ourselves, utterly unconditionally: in fact we do give and receive at least some approximation of “grace” (charis) to and from one another (at least some one-anothers). And the more able we are to love others more unconditionally, this is always, at least for a Christian, in proportion to the “gift” (charis-ma) of “grace” (charis) we have so “gratefully” (eu-charist) been willing to receive.
I, at least, am among many who have devoted our lives to earning, competing and achieving that which, understandably, is “conditional.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s part of living, realistically, both in and of the world. In fact, a Christian would likely see such a way of living as an expression of “stewardship”; if, at least expressed out of a spirit of “gratitude” (eu-charist). Such a way of living does not, however, define one’s relationship with God. Since that loving presence who is God is “unconditional” (charis). Indeed, we are loved of God, not because of who we are or aren’t, much less what we may or may not have done. Rather, we are loved in such an unconditional way (“grace,” charis) because that is who God is.
Moreover, it is not our circumstances which reveal, much less define God’s way of loving us. Since we are loved just as much in the worst, as in the best of times. Or as St. Paul puts it: “In all things be thankful (eu-charist) . . .” (Philippians 4: 6). Remembering, of course, how much of Paul’s life was actually spent in jail.
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s too easy, I’m afraid, to spend too much time and energy being bitter or resentful over what we seem to have lost out on, or haven’t gotten. Rather than being thankful (eu-charist) for what we have received, what we have been given (charis-ma).
In his autobiography, Once To Every Man (Atheneum, 1977), the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin describes being a college student at Yale University. He was, with considerable bitterness and despair, attending the funeral service for a classmate who had been killed in a motorcycle accident.
“As the priest walked down the aisle of the church, intoning the familiar words of Job, ‘The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away,’ I wanted to stick out my foot and trip him,” Coffin writes. “But then, at that very moment, it was as if a still small voice spoke to me, asking, ‘What part of that statement are you objecting to?'”
“It was, I had to confess, ‘the Lord has given.’ And while that was hardly enough to clear up all my doubt and confusion,” says Coffin, “it at least started me to thinking: this world simply is not ours; at best, we are but guests.”
As Christians, at least, we are called–however much, if not despite our striving–to rest our lives in such a gracious presence (“grace,” charis); indeed, such a “gift” (charis-ma).
