Thanksgiving and Beyond

Not sure what happened last week... must have been that it was Thanksgiving and it is the one American Holiday I refuse to give up. So was a bit busy supervising the cooking and preparation for the turkey dinner. (Thanks Ruth for working so hard and letting me get the credit) I quite honestly love this particular holiday. It is not like the goofiness that Halloween is turning into, trying to decide if it is just a bunch of fun or an excuse to get as close to evil as we can without quite admitting that is what the witches, ghosts and goblins represent. And then there is Christmas which is one we get so mixed up on we don’t know what to do with ourselves, is it an excuse to be a kid-(I like that part), is it about gifts for those we love and care about, or maybe it is about the dinner, that excuse to do away with our diets for one extra big go, but whatever we come up with about Christmas it is to my mind being ruined by the excessive commercialism, but I think anymore we say this every year and no one pays much attention to the idea that Christmas promotions starting already in October makes most of us a bit tired of it all by the time Christmas actually arrives.

But one thing I am observing is that we are losing too often the meaning of the holidays we have on the books. Remembrance Sunday, “we will not forget”, is falling fast by the wayside, the couple of handfuls that showed at the Memorial this year sadly to my mind shows that, say it was cold all you want but the lads that died in the trenches had it colder. I am glad for those who do show each year. Halloween as mentioned has lost the sense of it being the eve of All Saints Day. How many of us really know who St. Andrew even was as a historical figure? And Christmas, the season which really officially started in the churches this past Sunday, is really about Christ and his incarnation. Yet the tradition seems for too many of us Christians to be that of bemoaning the fact that Jesus is getting left out more and more. That political correctness is trying to remove the trappings of what Christmas is really about. It is ok to do the Santa thing, and decorate a bit, but don’t say Happy Christmas, must say Happy holidays or X-mas. We forget that the beginning of it is ‘Christ’, if he hadn’t come we wouldn’t even have this holiday.

So back to my busy week of Thanksgiving; I love it because it reminds me in my life to be thankful for all the blessings I receive and to be thankful even in my hard times since in them somehow my loving heavenly Father has a lesson for me to learn. So for me it is three ‘F’s; Family, Food and Fellowship and my thankfulness that I can enjoy all three...

Now let Christmas Joy begin,

Rev. Jon Bergen