...Doing for Thanksgiving?

What Are You Doing for Thanksgiving?

I love the Fall – the crispness in the air, the changing leaves, the crisp, blue sky, and the heralding of holidays.  Thanksgiving has always been our family’s favorite celebration.  Christmas can be challenging for large families with limited incomes.  Easter, for the family of the pastor, is a very busy time for the church.  Thanksgiving, however, has always been about family, faith, food, and fellowship.

Mom would always fix a delicious meal, and we would sit around the table, stuffed into a stupor.  We thought we had just overeaten, completely unaware of all of the current lore about turkey and tryptophan, whatever that is.  My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins would all come by later that evening, sampling and exchanging leftovers, and everyone would exclaim that the cooking was the best ever!  Personally, I thought it was a lot of hard work, requiring days of preparation but over in fewer than six hours.  It was, though, the stuff of which memories are made.

I will never forget when it became my time to help make the memories.  It had been a stressful year.  My husband and I had been blessed by the birth of our younger son.  He, however, had been born five weeks early and had experienced respiratory problems.  My dad died of a heart attack nine days after Jamie’s birth, and my mom died five months later, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  Suddenly, I wanted to cancel all holidays, all celebrations, and all responsibilities.  I was unsure that I could give thanks for anything.  However, as the first-born daughter, I was well aware of what my parents would have expected of me.

My dad, whose father had been abusive when drinking alcohol, had grown up with few happy memories of family traditions.  When Dad accepted Christ as his personal Savior, he never got over having a Father who loved him unconditionally.  As a result, family became the driving force for my dad, a warm, loving, French-Irish-Italian who radiated the love of Jesus to everyone around him.  If someone had no family, they were invited to join ours.  If anyone at church had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, he brought him or her home to our house, sometimes to Mom’s concern over stretching the meal.  Dad’s rallying cry was the more, the merrier.

Anyone and everyone was welcome at our table, where Dad's eyes would fill with tears as he spoke of his gratitude to God for His gift of Jesus Christ.  He wept as he told about the joy of being included in the family of believers.  Next, he would invite anyone in the house who did not know Jesus to become one of His and to know the joy of being loved beyond measure.  Each person at the table was then invited to share something for which they were thankful.  Hands were joined; heads were bowed; and Dad wept his prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord, as he expressed his gratitude for each person at the table.  Then, the food was passed, and a form of ordered mayhem ensued, with everyone talking at once.

As that first Thanksgiving without Dad and Mom loomed closer and closer, I knew what I needed to do.  All of us children were married and had in-laws to whose homes we could go – all, that is, except our youngest sister, who was only eighteen and living alone in Dad’s and Mom’s house.  Suddenly, the Lord filled my heart with an overwhelming desire to continue a tradition of inclusion.  I called my brother and sisters, pulling rank as the eldest as I implored them to continue the tradition of the family feast of Thanksgiving.  Though I had never cooked a turkey, I invited everyone to my house, determined to perpetuate the joy of belonging:  First, to God the Father; next, to my precious husband and sons; last, to that great extended family of brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and anyone else with nowhere to go.

It was a memorable occasion.  I thought the turkey was defective, with no breast meat, because I accidentally cooked it upside down.  As I put the oysters for oyster dressing through the blender, I forgot to put the bottom in it and had oysters oozing all over the cabinet.  It took me two years to learn to make a homemade piecrust.  I am sure I could have fed a third-world country for years with all of the dough I ruined.  Inadvertently, I used powdered sugar rather than flour for the homemade rolls.  However, no one got ill from food poisoning, and we were together.  Though we wept with tears of loss and adjustment, we rejoiced over a new baby, laughed over my cooking disasters, and delighted that we could spend eternity with Mom, Dad, and one another because of the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It was the end of one tradition, the beginning of another for sixteen years, and the hint of traditions to come after we moved from Texas to Georgia and my sister moved from Texas to Idaho.

That ministry of inclusion continues today.  Our family has continued to search out those who have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.  Since we are from Texas, we inform everyone that we will watch the Dallas Cowboys following dinner; no one is required to cheer for them, but we do ask that no one boo them.  My sister in Idaho collects folks from her small town and delivers meals to those who can’t get out, and my brother and sister cannot count the number of people in and out of their home on Thanksgiving.  After all, it is scriptural to have meals of thanksgiving.  And they continued daily… eating meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people.  (Acts 2:46-47)

What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

© 2010 Gerry Sisk

(11/03/10)