The Rev. Fred G. Garry - November 18, 2001
Texts: Genesis 18 and Luke 1 Robert Fulghum recounts a Thanksgiving
call he received one year from a young parishioner. Away at college
for the holidays she phoned Fulghum to express her distress concerning
our national holiday of pilgrims and cranberry. "They lied
to me," she began. The lie he was to discover was in the
rather dubious account of Thanksgiving we offer to children.
It turns out in grade school "she had played Pocahontas"
complete in a "velour nightgown," and marrying "the
tall handsome blond kid playing Miles Standish."
Her childhood account included cardboard
hats and sneakers painted silver. Supposedly her elementary school
had suggested silver shoes as proper pilgrim attire. The kicker
for me though in her account was the substitution of the bluster
gun/musket with a "plastic submachine gun, which gave the
pageant a measure of tension, seeing it was really a watergun
loaded with cranberry juice." Violence though was abated
and all gathered together around "a long row of card tables"
where pilgrims and indians dined upon "turkey sandwiches
washed down with root beer."
These early images though were dashed
upon her entry to high school. Evidently, her American history
teacher had taken one too many courses on Marxist revisioning
and the pilgrims were transformed from turkey loving pals of
the indians to "uptight, right-wing prudes- fascistic bigots
who were not only harsh on the indians but harsh on each other
as well. Pilgrims were against fun, she recounted, and spent
most of their spare time in church, where they didn't even sing.
Sometimes they burned people for being witches. There were against
science, education, dancing, chocolate, tobacco, and fooling
around between boys and girls." Such a picture she concluded
caused her to protest her "parents' celebration of evil
incarnate."
Fortunately for the young woman, Fulghum
reports, her college had offered a much more accurate picture
of the pilgrims. She came to find out some information a bit
closer to the truth. "Pilgrims did not dress in black all
the time; they did not come to found America, they came to worship
in freedom. They drank wine, ate good food when they got it,
smoked tobacco," and given their progeny were to found Harvard
University and populate a good portion of Massachusetts, they
were categorically opposed to sex.
This final picture gained in college
represents a rather classic struggle to achieve a historically
correct understanding. As Fulghum listened to the young woman
describe her struggle two things came clear. History can be confusing
and college can be lonely if you can't come home for the holidays.
Speaking as a student of history who has spent some holidays
far from extended family and childhood homes, I can affirm both.
The history of thanksgiving is an interesting
one. Most attempts to place the meal with the Pilgrims in 1621
get a bit skewed in the telling. To be accurate you have to let
go of turkey and replace it with venison and lobster and oysters.
Mash potatoes have to go, as the newly discovered tuber was still
considered poisonous by the Pilgrims. Corn, there was corn. But
cornmeal stuffing with chestnuts, raisins, and celery mingled
with sausage is a real stretch. And one late afternoon meal shared
after the Lions win or lose? More than likely the thanksgiving
meal was a harvest festival that lasted three days.
Now for those of you who have limited
to somewhat disastrous relations with extended family this last
historical inaccuracy is a blessing in disguise. Imagine three
days of Thanksgiving. Imagine having to share not only your turkey,
but also the turkey sandwiches! Shudder to think.
Historical accuracy is not always all
that its cracked up to be. Yet despite the occasional challenges,
the family posturing, or cramped eating spaces (despite the challenge
of having to always eat at the kids table, even when you have
children), despite this Thanksgiving is wonderful holiday. I
have wonderful memories of family gatherings made romantically
easy by the eyes of a child. It was not until these memories
where separated by thousands of miles that they truly began to
take hold. You don't know what you have fill it's gone.
In some recent inquiries into thanksgiving
and its historical roots I came upon an intriguing clue. For
the most part "Thanksgiving" was an occasional national
meal, celebrated mainly under the auspices of harvest festivals
until 1863. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln declared a day of thanksgiving,
and in 1864 fixed the fourth Thursday of November as its special
day. The clue for me was 1863. 1863? The middle of the Civil
war? Why in the world would you introduce a day of thanksgiving
as a national holiday during the bloodiest conflict American
has ever endured? Thanks for what?
To answer this I turned to the Lincoln's
own words. He had a number of different addresses and proclamations
concerning the day, as there must have been others who asked
the same question. He begins one proclamation "the year
that is drawing towards it close, has been filled with the blessings
of fruitful fields and healthful sides. To these bounties, which
are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source
from which they come, other have been added, which are so extraordinary
in nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even
the heart which is habitually insensible. This year, and this
address came a few months after the battle of Gettysburg.
How he could make this statement may
not be quickly apparent to those unfamiliar with Lincoln's beliefs.
Some may even find such a call to thanksgiving as a kind of propaganda
maneuver to buoy a nation sunk in grief. Yet if you read on,
you get a better picture. In another proclamation concerning
the holiday he writes, "we have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many
years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth
and power as no other nation has ever grown." "But,"
he writes, "we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the
gracious hand which preserved us." Concluding his remarks,
"it seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly,
reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and
one voice, by the whole American people."
From other speeches Lincoln offered it
would appear that thanksgiving was a key act in his mind. Far
from propaganda, it was an. act of contrition, an act of repentance.
For in many ways, he believed our Civil War was fruit of misdeed,
or as he wrote, "we have forgotten God." The holiday
of Thanksgiving it would appear was born not of civic pride or
harvest celebration, but a prayer of hope in the midst of tragedy.
1863 and 1864 were not easy years for
Lincoln. Indeed it would be hard to find an easy year of Lincoln's
life. But these were excruciating ones. Shuffling generals like
a dealer does cards, taking on the role once himself, our sixteenth
president oversaw the most precarious of days our nation has
ever seen. Losing loved ones, having to read casualty reports
of battles ever numbering in the thousands (personally I believe
Lincoln grieved all the casualties) he walked the halls of the
White House without rest. Yet in the midst of this he calls not
for a day of mourning, a day of penance, but a day of thanksgiving.
This is the historically accurate beginning of our Thanksgiving
Day.
Historical accuracy though is not enough
though. 1863 and 1864 were the dates, but they are something
so much more. Like Fulghum's parishioner: it was not the history
that gave the meaning, it was the living, it is the gathering
of today. Like a psalmist who praises God from the pit, who rails
against the injustice of life, and then proclaims the favor of
God, so were Lincoln's proclamations. They were prophetic and
healing. They were meant as both contrition and celebration for
a nation staggering after heavy blows. But so it is with God's
mercy.
God came to Abraham and to Zechariah
before the blessings were seen. The message to be praised, the
hope to be lifted up was given when there was little hope, if
any. In Abraham and Zechariah is a lesson: believe before the
dawn, find hope while darkness prevails. The people of the North
must have received Lincoln's call for thanksgiving as Sara heard
of her impending child, with a crazy laughter. "Thanksgiving!
Thankful for what? For the children we've lost? For the cities
emptied or destroyed? For brother turned against brother? Thankful
indeed!"
It must have seemed impossible at first.
But yet, celebrate they did, and since. There was something of
such profound truth in Lincoln's call that it has echoed in our
hearts ever since. Let all calls of harvest festival, or civic
holiday, or even pilgrims fade. For the story of the pilgrim
is one of celebrating after having endured. Our real holiday
began when there was much left to be endured. 1863 and 1864 is
not the end of the war; they are its very heart, a heart of darkness.
It was a dark time. Yet Lincoln calls us to see a year filled
with blessings of field and sky.
I just cannot imagine a timelier message
for our nation today. The struggle to find peace, the hope for
a restored sense of security, a need to remember all we have
despite our losses. Most of all though the need for our nation
to remember from whence our blessings come. This was Lincoln's
motivation. He believed America had forgotten. He believed the
struggle of his day was due to this. Yet he also believed something
greater. Of our prosperity he wrote, "they are the gracious
gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger
for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."
Thus it was for mercy's sake he called
us, the people of America, he called us to prayer. So today I
would like to call us as a people of faith. On Thursday of this
week we will gather with friends or family, and since we have
now discovered they are not poisonous, turkey and potatoes. We
will gather and say a blessing over the meal. This is what families
do on Thanksgiving. Let us though add an important part to this.
Let us pray for our nation and say thanks to God. Thanks not
just for prosperity or abundance, but thanks for the persistent
love of God poured upon us. Let us give thanks for freedom, for
liberty, a land of opportunity and for those who have died so
we may five. Let us give thanks for them as the gifts God has
given. Let us remember God. Amen.
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