Thanksgiving

One of the high points of our US experience was the annual Thanksgiving Day (today - the last Thursday of November) when families and friends gathered over a traditional meal in thankfulness.  I know I have posted on this before because Carol and I never got over these delicious times of being positive and consciously finding reasons to be thankful and sounding them out to others.  Since returning to the UK we have continued the festival, inviting friends to our Cambridge home.  Over the meal Carol recounts the origins of the celebration in the early travails and harvest success of the Pilgrim Fathers before each of us around the table shares something they are truly thankful for.

I say truly thankful because I guess thanks may not always be truly!  That song line: Give thanks with a grateful heart has always posed the question to me: Can we give thanks with an ungrateful heart?   And I think we can....perfunctorily, as duty, we can say thank you without allowing enough pause and thought about the kindness, effort, and love involved. 

On this Covid-clobbered day Carol and I will  share Thanksgiving alone.  She set the table last night complete with a model Pilgrim Father and (of course) thanksgiving napkins.  Putting the photograph on Facebook we were astonished at the greetings and likes from all over the place.  We know we have so much to give thanks for with genuinely grateful hearts.  Thanks to God for all his love so powerfully expressed at Advent and for the love shared with family and friends.  We hope to banish anything  perfunctory or duty!  And enjoy the turkey.