Fight for your right to be thankful!

If you're like me, you love Thanksgiving...the food, the family, the thankfulness, the food. However, I am shocked and appalled at the lack of recognition it receives in this country. Am I alone in this? Stores go nutso over Halloween, of which I'm no fan, but whatever. Then, from November 1, a month which should be set aside for turkeys and scarecrows and horns of plenty, before your very pumpkin pie-loving little eyes, they're stocking Christmas trees and boxes of candy canes and pre-lit reindeer for your front lawn! Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas just as much as the next guy, but it's so commercialized now that it's disgusting. A holiday that is supposed to be about Jesus' birth has been turned into another greedy excuse to exploit. And a holiday about being thankful for what you have instead of worrying about what you want or what you have to give, fades in the background.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out shopping for a Thanksgiving wreath to hang on my door. I found nothing. Absolutely no Thanksgiving merchandise for sale...I looked everywhere. Sure, I found some paper plates with pumpkins and some dish towels in fall colors, but mostly I found things like fat little singing santas, fake Christmas trees and stockings hangers-- in mid-November!! Am I alone in my sadness over the loss of the celebration of Thanksgiving? (Wow, talk about a lot of prepositional phrases!) Maybe I'm so vehement because I live in Spring Hill, the land of gaudy Christmas decorations and home to people who leave their Christmas lights up YEAR ROUND (no, I'm not kidding, and yes, I said PEOPLE). Christmas decorations are just not appropriate until the day after Thanksgiving, people, don't you know this??!!

I just love Thanksgiving, a time when the pilgrims and the Indians sat down together and gave thanks for what they had. Sure, the Indians didn't know that the white men were about to bring years of oppression to their race, but they ate Turkey and green bean casserole together just the same.

I guess the reason Thanksgiving is looked upon with such indifference, even disdain by so many today is that more and more people reject the fact that there's Anyone to be thankful to. If they are thankful, then they have to admit that there's Someone to thank. I pray that God has mercy on such a selfish, greedy, thankless nation. And I for one am going to fight for Thanksgiving, and do my best to be thankful every day for the blessings God has giving me, because I don't deserve a one.