On Thanks and Giving

For the first two decades of my life, Thanksgiving was our only whole-family gathering of the year. The cousins loved the reunion, laughing and hugging and playing an annual game of hide-and-seek. Grandpa cupped his hands, yelled his familiar if not creative “Come and get it,” and the first wafts of Grandma’s wonderful cooking greeted us as we stumbled up the front steps.

I remember the year I graduated to the grown-ups table, everyone holding hands, heads bowed, as I nervously read my blessing, an obligation of that rite of passage. Then we faced the challenge of carefully filling our plates, squeezing a bit of everything from the huge buffet featuring Thanksgiving-only dishes like creamed onions and corn pudding without spilling gravy on the antique lace tablecloth. There was something sacred about ritual and tradition. It was reliable and unchanging, comforting and reassuring.

Almost unnoticed, something began to change. Maybe it was the teens lobbying successfully to amend the “No TV on Thanksgiving” rule. Maybe it was noticing that the parade we watched had become the Macy’s Day Parade, the commentators constantly referring to “Turkey Day” — both “thanks” and “giving” had disappeared.

And something quietly but decisively arose to replace them, it seemed. Thanksgiving, compromised at first, seemed steadily eclipsed then thoroughly co-opted by the following day — Black Friday. Retail businesses sensed and seized the irresistible opportunity to create a single shopping day unequaled in sales and profits. The retail media blitz that starts after Halloween reaches its peak the morning after Thanksgiving.

Frenzied shoppers descend on the malls, crowding against entrance doors, awaiting the stroke of midnight, then stampede in, the rush each year resulting in serious injuries, even deaths. A deep shadow falls across the sacredness of Thanksgiving, darkening a season of light, gratefulness, love, and gracious gift-giving.

We can choose differently. We can reconnect to Thanksgiving in a way that reclaims our relationship to the life force that yields the food we eat and animates those we share it with. We can model for our children the wonder of communion at the heart of our Thanksgiving holiday — honoring the abundance of the earth from which we have evolved and that we share.

We can also reimagine holiday gift-giving. We can affirm our connection to our communities by shopping locally or, better yet, making our gifts from local materials as an act of devotion that honors the recipient. We can consider eliminating TV from the Thanksgiving celebration and joining Buy Nothing Day as a response to Black Friday.

Rather than buying things, we can give things that cost no money: a walk in the woods, a backrub, doing dishes for a week, sending a handwritten letter of gratitude. We can gather our families for an afternoon of community service, volunteering at an organization chosen together, giving our children an opportunity to learn about those in need, to realize how good it can feel to contribute to someone or work side by side with those who have less than we do.

There are endless ways we can revive the original spirit of the holidays so they are an expression of thanksgiving and love that honors and celebrates our loved ones, our communities, and the greater web of life of which we are a part.

How we choose to celebrate the season may just impact the world we live in. This holiday season, let us reflect carefully on the values we wish to live by and reconnect the thanks and giving. Maybe it’ll be contagious. Let’s start a “good news epidemic”!

Howard E. Friend, a former pastor of the Montauk Community Church, is an organizational consultant, teacher, and writer who lives outside Philadelphia. He is active in the Pachamama Alliance, which helps indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest preserve their land and culture.