Being Thankful for the Right Reasons

Turkey, football, favorite family memories...Thanksgiving is a holiday growing as a favorite among Americans. I was thinking about what I should right this week, and (although it is probably nothing like what the other princesses are posting), I decided on the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Sometimes I think this is a little ironic. Stores and T.V. stations put a lot of money into advertising their Black Friday sales. Cooking and appliance magazines start selling Thanksgiving food and turkey cookers in August. Your parents and relatives have probably been planning for months for the big night. However, through it all, the true meaning of the season seems to have been lost and replaced with football games.

The holiday known as Thanksgiving seems to have lost the relevance of its name in our culture. Who are all the advertisements actually thanking? It's kind of like sending out a thank you note with no particular address on it. What's the point?

Actually, there is a lot of point to this holiday.

When a separatist religious group hated by the king of England made the dangerous journey to America, they changed the course of history forever. The courage of people like William Brewster, Priscilla Mullins, John Carver and others is commonly misinterpreted today. While we are taught in school that the pilgrims came simply for religious freedom, that is not the whole story. The Mayflower Compact is even sometimes edited in school history books! If you read the original manuscript, you will find that they came not only for religious freedom and to build a colony, but also for the advancement of the Christian faith. When it came time for the great Thanksgiving feast, the pilgrims really had a reason to give thanks. They could thank God that some of them had survived. They new that God had saved them from the fierce Native American tribe that most certainly would have killed them if the tribe had survived. They were truly thankful that God had sent the Native Americans to help them. They had so much to thank God for that they created a holiday to commemorate it!

The sad thing about that is, the true meaning of thanking God has somehow been lost in our culture.

Remember not only on the fourth Thursday in November, but also every day of the year, that God has truly blessed you, and you know who you are thanking.

Princess Melody