Tom Finneran: Thanksgiving Leftovers

Friday, November 29, 2013

Tom Finneran, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

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Amongst the nonstop cooking and Black Friday madness, it's vital to keep the true intention of Thanksgiving in mind during the holidays.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, was the end of the line for many high school football players. This year’s seniors will be moving on to college where the game can only be played by the much bigger, stronger, faster, better players. There’s a world of difference between high school and college-level football. That fact of life leaves a large number of kids with only memories—of teammates, practices, coaches, and rivalries. Those memories are riches, however, and the discipline developed through training and teamwork will serve these young folks well in the years ahead. Cheers and best wishes to all of them as life’s roads beckon…

Thanksgiving itself ranks very high in my Mount Rushmore of American holidays. I have it in fourth place. Tied for first are the holidays of Christmas and Easter, the two most significant events in any Christian’s calendar. They need no explanation from me. They have long stood as spiritual lighthouses in the homes of many Americans. Leading the “secular” holidays in my mind is Memorial Day, a somber day of reflection and appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy, paid for by the bravery and blood of others.

Next comes Thanksgiving, giving us meaningful time to pause, if only for a few hours, to reflect on the abundance and blessings of America. We usually celebrate Thanksgiving with our families, sometimes gathering in very large number. At different times, our family gatherings have involved as many as forty people at table, growing in number to more than double that who stop by for hugs, conversation, and pie! Two Thanksgiving bonuses we have enjoyed over the years have been the welcoming of some of our daughters’ college classmates, who, finding themselves too far or too broke to go home, were happy to join us in celebration, and family card games, often enlivened by copious amounts of wine. It is a wonderful holiday, made even better by the efforts of many others to help out the poorer and lonely folks in our neighborhoods.

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Perspective

Two more thoughts about Thanksgiving…I find the holiday increasingly sullied by the utter nonsense surrounding Black Friday holiday shopping. Can the mad pursuit of the almighty buck ever pause in modern America? Is nothing sacred anymore? Apparently not, as I hear about more and more “specials” on Thanksgiving evening, more and more “news” coverage of people standing in line for hours in order to be first for mad dash shopping, and saddest of all, employees being forced to work despite their desire to have one quiet night at home with their families. There’s a sickness in America which we feed when we succumb to such idiocy. I refuse to.

To hear a unique address describing this quintessential American holiday, listen to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s address on November 23rd, 1944. His remarks to Allied forces “in bivouacs, dugouts, and outposts” around the world is a powerful reminder that peace and freedom from tyranny were then and are now the great and worthy causes of our lifetime and for which we should be profoundly thankful. Churchill is always a listening pleasure.

Count your blessings

In thinking about Thanksgiving, the most obvious thought is the sheer abundance we have historically enjoyed. Even in times of economic distress, Americans enjoy a standard of living that is beyond belief for the rest of the world. They see America as a miracle, an unimaginable land of freedom and opportunity. No wonder our country still holds a special place in the minds of countless immigrants whose families strove to get here under horrific privation. Whatever country or continent your ancestors came from, unless they were slaves, the entry into America was seen as a new beginning, a chance to escape famine, poverty, and tyranny. There was joy and thanksgiving in making that escape, recognizing that whatever hardships lay ahead, one’s children would have a fair chance at a better life.

Another blessing, less frequently thought of, was the blessing of those immense oceans which our ancestors had to cross. As frightening as were the voyages of the “coffin ships” bearing immigrants to our shores, those oceans were vast protective moats from the bullies and quarrels of other lands. It’s very difficult to ship, land, and supply invading armies to American shores. Even Great Britain, once upon a time the most powerful nation in the world, a nation upon whose empire the sun never set, armed to the teeth with a superlative army and navy, learned to their dismay the difficulty of fighting a fledgling but determined nation thousands of miles away. And once a generation or two of colonists had grown up free from the yoke of the royal court, there was no stopping the emergence of America as the ideal of the world.

For that happy fact, and other countless blessings, we might smile and wish all Americans a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

 

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