Whenever I think of our American holiday of Thanksgiving, I never think of it in a historical sense.
I doubt that any Americans celebrating Thanksgiving think of its history. For me Thanksgiving is a time of memories of family and the love that bonded us in all our mess and dysfunction.
Thanksgiving is a nostalgic return to a place where I was loved and my life took on its initial form.
As a single person for two decades after leaving home, I was constantly returning to my home in the countryside of southern Virginia. By late November the trees were stark and the temperature chilled, but there remained a certain charm and welcome warmth to the land of my roots. Living without family made the sight and embrace of my Mom and Dad extra special. Without a doubt Mom was the catalyst of all the treasured warmth even as Dad was the caretaker of the more than warm wood-burning stove. By now Mom had decorated the house with at least two Christmas trees, and I was spared the arguments over the choice of trees and other annual disagreements. Dad’s traditional blue lights covered the manicured boxwoods in front of our house.
Already the enclosed unheated porch was filled with all sorts of candies, pies, cakes, cheese balls, etc. It was a grazer’s paradise. Mom was the oldest of thirteen children and during the depression had cooked the most modest of foods in order to live. But now she lived to cook. That was her passion and one of her love languages. Many of the delights on that porch were my favorites which she had made just for me.
On Thanksgiving Day when all the extended family would come for our celebration, our home was filled with aromas beyond description. Before there was a honey-baked ham, my Mom cooked a brown sugar and pineapple glazed ham that defied description. I always managed to be in the Kitchen when she retrieved the ham from the oven. I would pick off the juiciest portions while she slapped my hands pretending to be upset at my butchering of her masterpiece.
Finally, all the four children and spouses and grandchildren were seated around at least two tables looking like a Norman Rockwell painting. Without exaggeration we were feasting on about twelve different courses that of course included turkey and dressing, with and without oysters. Everyone overate and spent the afternoon moaning over our gluttony while some of the local married siblings contemplated their next meal at the in-laws home.
Yes, Thanksgiving is definitely about remembering and giving thanks. In Luke 22:19 we read, “And when He had taken some bread and given Thanks, He broke and give it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ “Jesus is in the middle of a Passover celebration of freedom from captivity. And naturally, He gives thanks. The original language of “gave thanks” is the word eucharisteo. In the middle of this word is our word grace or “charis.” Jesus is about to be broken and poured out for our sins, and He is celebrating with His beloved disciples. We can only surmise the gamut of emotions in His knowing what was to come and His remembering of all that He had experienced with His cherished friends. No doubt Jesus loved to eat and drink and to party. His ministry had begun at a wedding where He would turn water into wine. To know Zacchaeus He would invite himself to dinner with this despised man. Imagine our Lord eating and drinking with this sinner. And what about the feast with the multitudes as He took the insufficient five loaves and two fish and broke them over and over to feed the thousands who had listened to His words?
But this is the Last Supper, the last time Jesus will celebrate and remember the father’s blessings and favor with His disciples. It is an unparalleled time of Thanksgiving for the broken body and shed blood of the Savior, the bread and the wine. From now on Jesus tells His followers to do this drinking and eating in remembrance of Him. Ann Voscamp in her book The Broken Way writes, “remembrance, anamnesis, does not simply mean memory by mental recall, the way you remember your own address-but it means to remember a past event again through the physical, to make it take form through reenactment.” It is like my taste of honey baked ham or turkey and dressing that takes me back to my parents’ home in southern Virginia, and I experience all that Thanksgiving means to me. Voscamp goes on, “We welcome remembering, we hold remembering, we let remembering wrap around us and carry us like a dance that need not end.”
At this Thanksgiving eat and drink and above all remember our Lord as you break the cornbread or yeast rolls and drink the wine or the tea. It is the time of the Holy Eucharist. “ Eucharisteo!”
Guest author: Jimmy Snead