The Forgotten Day of... Feasting?

Whether the rumors about Angelina Jolie's refusing to celebrate the day where American pilgrims supposedly try to rewrite history and murder innocent people, are true or not, I think that such a view is sadly misinformed.

For a brief history lesson, the commonwealth was established the first year after the mayflower landed and almost half their people died due to disease and partially because the system was so flawed. It completely collapsed. The feast happened the year after when communism was obliterated and a healthy, free-man bartering system was established, with the help of the English speaking indians who were experts in agriculture. The great thanksgiving feast is just as much a celebration of political freedom as a celebration of religious freedom and prosperity.

Squanto was enslaved by British men and escaped but not before he had become fluent in the language. Wicked men stole a great deal of his free life from him to make him subject to man's oppression and these people; the pilgrims were from that same place. Squanto had every right to hate them but instead helped them and became one of their own because of mercy that he had been shown in his past. Mercy that man shows to another by the power of God changes that man's heart and makes him thankful because someone covered the offense of that which was undeserving.

It is for freedom and for mercy that we celebrate this thanksgiving today. Paul in his epistles tells us numerous times to be always thankful. I think gratitude is really the only way to understand ourselves in light of God and that's why Paul speaks of it so intentionally. The humility of the understanding that we are only as beautiful as we are because of God, only as forgiven as we are because of Christ, and only as happy as we are because of the Spirit of God that has (hopefully) infiltrated every aspect of our lives.

Whether Jolie thinks that about thanksgiving or not, thanksgiving is a confusing and forgotten holiday slipped in between halloween and christmas because people think that they are in control. The pilgrims lost almost half of their people to disease and other factors that first year and even still they gave thanks to God for freedom, prosperity, and friends who come along side the weak. It is because of them and the integrity they had and their willingness to do hard things that made us the America that we are, or at least were for a time.

This holiday means nothing if we can't spend at least ONE day being wholly and completely, selflessly thankful for that which we are not because of that which God is.

I truly hope that you have a joyful thanksgiving full of gratitude and the beauty of the blessing that God has given you!