There comes a moment on Thanksgiving Day when even the most enthusiastic among us must admit that we have eaten enough.
This moment usually arrives approximately twenty minutes after we should have admitted it.
The turkey has been carved. The potatoes have disappeared under heroic quantities of gravy. Someone has produced a second kind of stuffing because apparently one stuffing is an indication of poor planning. The cranberry sauce has remained largely untouched but nevertheless fulfilled its annual ceremonial obligation. And then someone says the most dangerous words spoken in a Canadian household on Thanksgiving Day:
“Would anyone like some pie?”
Of course we would.
We are Canadians. We have responsibilities.
And so we approach dessert with the quiet courage of people who know perfectly well that there is no longer any room available, but who believe that pumpkin pie may operate according to different laws of physics.
There is something wonderfully human about Thanksgiving.
We gather around tables that are rarely as tidy as the photographs suggest. We bring together families who love one another deeply and occasionally have difficulty agreeing about almost everything else. We tell old stories. We laugh. We remember people who once occupied chairs that now sit empty. We welcome new faces. We pass the potatoes. We attempt conversations with relatives whose opinions we have wisely avoided discussing since approximately 1997.
And somewhere in the midst of all of it, we give thanks.
At least, that is the idea.
But perhaps the great spiritual question of Thanksgiving is not whether we can be grateful for one day.
The question is whether gratitude can survive Tuesday.
Because Christian thanksgiving was never intended to be a holiday.
It was intended to become a way of life.
The Day After Thanksgiving
There is a particular melancholy about the day after a celebration.
The candles have burned down. The good dishes have been returned to the cupboard. The dining room table has resumed its ordinary responsibilities. The refrigerator contains seventeen containers whose contents are now collectively known as “leftovers.”
And ordinary life begins again.
Bills still arrive.
Doctors still deliver difficult news.
Relationships still require patience.
The world remains complicated.
The church still has meetings.
Indeed, if there is any theological argument against believing that Thanksgiving has permanently transformed the human condition, the existence of church meetings on Tuesday evening may be among the stronger ones.
And yet this is precisely where gratitude becomes interesting.
It is easy to give thanks when the table is full.
Christian gratitude asks whether we can still recognize grace when the dishes have been washed.
Scripture repeatedly calls the people of God to remember.
Remember what God has done.
Remember where you came from.
Remember who carried you through the wilderness.
Remember the covenant.
Remember the poor.
Remember the stranger.
Remember that the land is gift.
Remember that your life did not begin with you and will not end with you.
Biblical thanksgiving is deeply connected to memory because human beings are astonishingly gifted at forgetting grace.
We can receive a hundred gifts and become preoccupied with the one thing that went wrong.
We can walk through an entire day surrounded by ordinary mercies and notice mostly the traffic.
We can possess food, shelter, friendship, beauty, purpose and love and still lie awake thinking about the email somebody sent at 3:47 in the afternoon.
The human mind is a remarkable instrument.
It can contemplate eternity and simultaneously remain irritated for six hours because someone took our parking space.
Perhaps that is why thanksgiving requires practice.
Gratitude Is Not Pretending
Christian gratitude does not mean pretending everything is wonderful.
Some Thanksgiving tables contain sorrow.
Some chairs are empty.
Some relationships are strained.
Some families are carrying diagnoses they never wanted to hear.
Some people are facing unemployment, loneliness, uncertainty or grief.
And there are wounds in our communities and in our country that no amount of seasonal sentiment should encourage us to ignore.
Thanksgiving is not denial.
We do not give thanks because suffering is unreal.
We give thanks because suffering is not the whole story.
At the heart of Christian faith stands the astonishing conviction that God enters the brokenness of the world rather than avoiding it.
The Christian symbol is not a perfectly arranged harvest table.
It is a cross.
And Christians dare to look at that cross and say that even there — especially there — God was at work bringing life out of death, reconciliation out of division and hope out of despair.
That changes thanksgiving.
Gratitude is no longer simply our response when life behaves itself.
Gratitude becomes our refusal to believe that darkness has the final word.
Eucharistic People
There is another reason thanksgiving belongs so naturally to Christian life.
Every Sunday, Christians gather around another table.
We call what happens there Eucharist.
The word itself comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving.
Think about that.
At the centre of Christian worship is an act of thanksgiving.
We bring bread.
We bring wine.
Very ordinary things.
And then we give thanks.
We remember.
We bless.
We break.
We share.
And somehow the ordinary becomes a meeting place with grace.
Perhaps that is what Christian gratitude teaches us to do with the rest of life.
To take ordinary things seriously enough to bless them.
A cup of coffee before anyone else is awake.
The sound of rain against the window.
A friend who telephones at precisely the right moment.
A child laughing.
A walk beneath autumn leaves.
Someone remembering your name.
A meal that did not come from a drive-through window.
Although, in fairness, there are days when even the drive-through window should be received with considerable thanksgiving.
Grace is rarely as spectacular as we expect.
More often, grace quietly occupies the ordinary.
And gratitude teaches us to notice.
The Leftovers of Grace
Perhaps the real test of Thanksgiving comes when Thanksgiving is over.
What happens to all the gratitude we accumulated over the weekend?
Does it remain beside the turkey carcass until garbage day?
Or does it begin changing us?
Because gratitude that never becomes generosity has stopped halfway.
If I recognize that my life is gift, then I begin asking how my life might become gift for someone else.
If I give thanks for food, I begin caring about people who are hungry.
If I give thanks for a home, I begin noticing people who have nowhere safe to sleep.
If I give thanks for friendship, I begin noticing the lonely.
If I give thanks for creation, I begin treating the earth as something entrusted to my care rather than simply available for my consumption.
If I give thanks for forgiveness, I begin wondering whom I might need to forgive.
If I give thanks for grace, I begin becoming more gracious.
That is when thanksgiving becomes Christian.
Gratitude begins turning outward.
Tomorrow Morning
Tomorrow morning, Thanksgiving will be over.
The calendar will move on.
Stores will begin reminding us, with remarkable enthusiasm, that Christmas is apparently imminent.
The leftovers will begin their long migration from refrigerator to sandwich to soup.
And ordinary life will resume.
But perhaps thanksgiving does not have to end.
Perhaps tomorrow morning we might simply begin again.
Before reaching for the phone, name one gift.
Before complaining, notice one grace.
Before rushing, look around.
Before assuming that today is merely another ordinary day, remember that you have never lived this particular day before.
And somewhere within it God will be present.
Perhaps in worship.
Perhaps in another person.
Perhaps in creation.
Perhaps in an interruption.
Perhaps in something so ordinary that we almost miss it.
Because the spiritual life is not primarily about escaping ordinary life.
It is about learning to recognize God within it.
And perhaps that is where this week of thanksgiving has been leading us all along.
Not toward one magnificent feast.
Not toward one perfectly grateful day.
But toward a life increasingly awake to grace.
A life that learns to say thank you when the table is full and when only leftovers remain.
A life that receives blessings without clutching them.
A life that turns gratitude into generosity.
A life that notices.
A life that remembers.
A life that gives thanks.
And when we fail — as we certainly will — we simply begin again.
Because grace will already be there.
Waiting for us.
Probably beside the leftover pumpkin
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A prayer for a life of Thanksgiving
Gracious God,
thank you for the gifts we have noticed
and for the countless graces we have missed.
When the feast is finished
and ordinary life begins again,
teach us to remain thankful.
Open our eyes to your presence in simple things,
our hearts to those who need our love,
and our hands to share what we have received.
May our gratitude become generosity,
our blessings become blessings for others,
and our thanksgiving become not merely a day we celebrate,
but a life we live.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.