Thanksgiving Day: With an Emphasis on Thanks

How do we spend our Thanksgiving Day? Eating a meal of turkey, dressing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, a parade, and football on the television. However, the beginning of Thanksgiving was actually a feast of thanks.

Those present acknowledged this meal by giving thanks for their newly formed friendship and for the meal. The things that we have in common between now and then are sitting down to a meal and giving thanks. My question is this: Why do we only give thanks on this one day of the year?

Clearly, every single day we wake we can give thanks for one more day of life. Whenever we eat a meal we can give thanks for people who grew the food, the people who transported the food to our local grocery store, our ability to buy the food, and for the hands that prepared the meal. There is also the clothing on our backs, our furnishings, our homes, our means of transportation, our health, family, friends, and pets.

All of the people including the cotton growers, sheep farmers, textile workers, everyone who has any involvement in the fashion industry; those people who designed, made, and delivered our furnishings; the architect, contractor, and everyone who spends the day developing the materials that went into our homes; the many people who built our cars, tested them for safety, and delivered them to us; the doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, surgeons, nurses, lab technicians, therapists, chaplains, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, fitness centers, weight loss groups, nutritionists, and so many other things that help build us up when we are physically ill, spiritually weak, or emotionally stressed.

When I think of my car I have to acknowledge and give thanks to people responsible for the concept and initial development of so many means of transportation. Such people as Henry Ford, Orville and Wilbur Wright and others in their respective classes.

Telephone, vacuums, microwaves, clocks, window blinds, refrigerators, etc., who invented these things? These people are truly remarkable to me. They worked on developing something to help out at the time the item was invented. Today our lives are made easier because of those very items.

We are interdependent on people that we haven't met because something that was a part of their lives is now part of our lives. For making our life richer, they deserve our thanks. Family and friends are people who give us a history, keep us grounded in the present, and support us as we strive to achieve our goals for the future.

Lastly, our pets are something we chose to include in our lives. The myriad of emotions we can have doesn't scare them. They are our quiet support systems. What would we do without them?

Thanksgiving Day is a lovely day. We set time aside to appreciate everyone in our life. Now if we could raise that level of appreciation and carry that feeling to everyday of the year while remembering that other people are thankful for us, we would truly be happy.