No Apologies

Okay, I am going to be a party-pooper here.  If you are the sentimental type, please forgive me. I don't have a judgement about people posting 30 days of thankfulness.  However, I choose to not participate.  I believe we should be that thankful every day of our lives.  For a similar reason, I don't celebrate Valentine's Day.  I think we should be loving and appreciative of our spouse every day of our lives, and making it one commercial day just feels too contrived and compulsive to me.  That doesn't mean I don't respect those who do honor that day.

I think though that we forget sometimes the true meaning of a holiday.  Thanksgiving wasn't started so that we can look back over the last year at the bountiful blessings God has given us.  I would hope we would be grateful each day as He gives us our daily bread.  To me, Thanksgiving goes much deeper.

It is about honoring not just the bounties, not just honoring God as our Provider, but it is about remembering:

•  the sacrifices that the early settlers went through 
• the unity and hard work required of those early settlers
• the hard work ethic and determinism that Captain John Smith inspired, enabling the colonists to survive dire circumstances
• it is about remembering all that a completely different race did for the survival and well being of the early settlers
• which to me leads me to remembering that there is basic good will in all races and cultures
• it is about seeing the similarities in humanity and honoring and appreciating the differences

For me, Thanksgiving is very much a political holiday.  If we maintain an attitude of thankfulness all year long, then hopefully, Thanksgiving is not about articulating our gratitude for our bounty so much as it is appreciating our political system, appreciating different races and cultures, and appreciating that we are not entitled to the bounties we have.  Our forefathers made sacrifices just to survive.  Let us take this month to rid ourselves of our entitlement issues whether they be material, cultural, racial, gender, or other, and reach out to those who are different.

So, I will not apologize for not posting 30 days of thankfulness because I hope that I am aware on a daily basis of God's provision in my life, but I will take this month to teach my children about different cultures, about their founding fathers, about what the early settlers went  through to survive, and about how people from very different cultures/different races can find a common good will in each other if they choose to look for the good in others.  If God has prompted your spirit to post 30 days of gratitude, don't let me get in His way, but for me personally, I am choosing to remember and to teach my children why this day started in the first place.