The Meaning of Thanksgiving

Note: This week’s post is going out early as a special message for Thanksgiving.

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Amidst turkey, dressing, football, and Black Friday specials, I’m reflecting today on the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Gathering around the table, there is much to be thankful for, including abundandt food, the company of loved ones, freedom, and our country’s relative economic fortune.

But something’s not right. As households participate in celebratory thankfulness, our nation plunges deeper into tribal bitterness. “We the People” has gone missing. In its place we have a divided collection of self-serving identities. Hatred abounds. However, we can’t be both angry and grateful at the same time.

What then does it mean to be thankful? What’s required to sincerely give and receive thanks? 

Thankfulness, of course, follows a gift received, which means a gift has been given. Those gifts require initiative and sacrifice on behalf of the giver. Likewise, to celebrate togetherness, there must first be togetherness, which requires sustained observance of a collective “We.”

For thankfulness to grow, the roles of giver and receiver must frequently be exchanged. Receiving in absence of giving hinders accountability. Giving in the absence of receiving ultimately fosters bitterness. 

“We,” therefore, is built upon a foundation of reciprocity. Not the exchange of debits and credits, but the interchange of stewardship, thankfulness, and responsibility. 

Four hundred years ago, my paternal ancestors waved goodbye to their loved ones and sailed across a vast ocean to a new land. They were the pilgrims of children’s storybooks. When they landed, no social services, relief agencies, or external protections existed. They were on their own. And while I don’t know this for a fact, I highly suspect they were thankful. 

My ancestors lived on the eastern seaborn for 150 years. And then, during the 1790s, my fifth great-grandfather, Hezekiah Coats, ventured westward. Crossing the Ohio River, he purchased and cleared a plot of land where he and his wife Katherine built a log cabin and raised nine children on their subsidence farm. His son Daniel, grandson Bill, and great-grandson John would do the same. None of them could read or write. They didn’t have the opportunity to attend school. Nevertheless, according to family lore, they were thankful for their many blessings. 

My Dad, Norman Coats, was born in a tiny wood-frame farm house on Thanksgiving Day 1925. Like his ancestors, he grew up without electricity, central heating, or indoor plumbing. As a youngster, Dad helped chop wood for heating and cooking, carried water from the spring for washing, butchered hogs and farm hens for meat, and tended to strawberries and field crops by hand or with horse-drawn implements. Dad attended a one-room schoolhouse, studied by a coal-oil lantern, and was the first of my paternal ancestors to graduate from the 8th grade. 

Dad was very fond of his upbringing. Today, his family would be labeled economically disadvantaged, but they never saw it that way. Instead, they were thankful for their many blessings. 

What happened to us? The more we get, the more we want, and the less thankful we become.

I am as guilty as the next person for not being properly thankful. Reflecting on this, I made a list of twenty things I take for granted that my ancestors never dreamed of having:

1. Hot and cold running water

2. Central Heat and AC

3. Electricity

4. Indoor toilets

5. Cooktops and ovens connected to electricity, natural gas, or propane

6. Television with thousands of viewing options

7. Cell phones and the ability to make video calls to anywhere in the world

8. Automobiles, excellent roads, and public transportation

9. Grocery stores with thirty-five thousand items

10. Hospitals, doctors, emergency rooms, specialty care, and dental care

11. Antibiotics & vaccines

12. Prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses

13. Medical and casualty insurance

14. Soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, deodorant, skin cream, and cosmetics

15. Washing machines and clothes dryers

16. Internet & handheld computers

17. Primary and seconday public education, community colleges, and universities

18. Nearby public libraries

19. Inexpensive store-bought clothes

20. Police and fire protection

Privilege is a hot political topic these days, and for a good reason. Nevertheless, I’m sure my ancestors would’ve understood the word differently than how its used today.  The vast majority of U.S. Citizens have a higher standard of living than any other people in history, regardless of their respective identities or socio-economic status. Sadly, injustices persist, and we must work toward abolishing them. Nevertheless, we should all be thankful for the sacrifices our ancestors made to deliver a standard of unparalleled riches to us.

Thankfulness is a coin with two sides. The obverse side is responsibility. An absence of gratitude leads to a narrow insular perspective and deficiency of responsibility. We are all better off when we are all better off, and there is clearly much to be done. 

In the meantime, we should join hands and give thanks.

For we are all most certainly better off!

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