I heard this morning on the TODAY Show that an average Thanksgiving meal contains 5,000 calories and I wondered if we have missed the point of the holiday when we just look forward to stuffing ourselves to the point that we can’t walk.
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday that my family and I adopted a couple of years before we moved to the U.S.. Now we celebrate it every year with the turkey and everything else. It is a day that we look forward to, because we spend it with loved ones and enjoy a good meal. We take a break from everything to be together and that is a very good thing for all families. Every Thanksgiving day or Christmas eve dinner, for that matter, we thank God for allowing us to enjoy the meal and each other and pray for others who are just not as lucky. That is all good and nice, but is it just a simple “petition” for those who cannot enjoy the holiday enough? Could we perhaps offer up our craving for pumpkin pie and refrain from eating it as a sign of solidarity with others? Or have a simpler meal on this day? Or even more radical, could we instead go to the local shelter and help out cooking a meal for those whom we are actually praying for? This is all easier said than done, but holiness is achieved through practice and perseverance not through “grace alone.” I am often afraid that Thanksgiving Day can become a day to thank God for “making ME so special” and we miss the bigger picture.
Some may say that I am perhaps too rigid or ruining a nice holiday, but I do believe in the radical character that Catholicism gives to the Christian witness. The Catholic is a person that is in love–not with himself or herself, but with God and, hence, with the whole world. Since this love is rooted in the Cross–the Eucharist–it is a self-emptying love. A love that tirelessly seeks the other and is not satisfied until giving his entire self. Therefore, the Catholic goes beyond the norms and the paradigms and it is in this way that he or she becomes truly radical and, hence, a saint. The saints that we read about were truly radical: their secret lied in seeing beyond what the world seemed to offer and saw God in everything they did or said. They were in love and lived according to that love. Can we then go beyond the “usual” meaning of this Thanksgiving holiday?
The question becomes for us this Thanksgiving Day: Am I taking advantage of this holiday to see the true Christian meaning of what it is to be thankful? Thankfulness to God for his gifts do not exist in a vacuum, but rather many challenges are attached to it. God pours his gifts gratuitously on us, but for love of Him and His creation, we turn towards others and are not fulfilled until we make his gifts and love known to all.
What do you and your family do during this Thanksgiving holiday to make it simpler and to join in solidarity with others?
I’m not sure I really understand the idea of solidarity as it relates to giving up pumpkin pie. How does this help those who are hungry (unless, of course, you use the money you would have spent on pie, on the poor)? I don’t see how it would help us to relate to the poor better either. I can’t help but wonder how such a needless privation would help anything.
Can’t really help being English & all!
I think that not eating pumpkin pie would be an incorrect view of the God’s world, His Kingdom, and His blessings. There is no finite sized pie (pun intended). There is no zero-sum in God’s economy. We should not spit on the blessings that we have given.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-19
“Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.”
“Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.”
Let us be thankful for the gifts we have been given, to be generous with them, yes, but to also enjoy them as gracious and thankful receivers.
I do agree that this is a bit rigid. If it’s God’s calling for you, then forget what I say!
There is a time to sacrifice food. I don’t think thanksgiving is that time. Luigi Giussani said that joy is the mother of sacrifice. On a day like thanksgiving, gladness of the heart has primacy.
Now, if giving up a pumpkin pie truly gives you gladness of heart then I would recommend it.
Off Topic here.
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Peace & JOY to you:)
Marie
Katerina,
I’ve read your stuff for some time now, originally on vox-nova, and now here. I am always impressed with the clarity in which you perceive and express the Gospel message. Please continue offering us reminders and challenges of what holiness demands, for we are all called to be saints.
Unlike the other commenters I agree with you here. Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, but Catholics are called to bring the sacred into the secular and sanctify it. We celebrate our thanksgiving every Sunday at Mass. The very word Eucharist means thanksgiving, and in the Eucharist we are one the entire mystical body of Christ.
In the early Church, the Eucharistic celebration was accompanies by the agape meal, which brought all of God’s people in a local community together to share in food and fellowship, and there was to be no distinction between rich and poor, between the haves and the have-nots.
Perhaps a way to sanctify Thanksgiving would be not to sacrifice pumpkin pie, but share the abundance of our blessings with our brothers and sisters who are not so blessed.
P.S. I am working on my masters and am I writing a paper on Church Authority: assent and dissent. How are finding Lienhard’s book? Should I give it a look?
Thanks.