Thanksgiving Day (Part One):  Of all holidays, Thanksgiving Day is at the top of my list.  While Christmas and Easter are up there too, this one, as far as a national holiday, is one of my favorites.  It’s one of my favorites because I usually have only one liturgy (a rarity with holidays), and more importantly, it’s a day to celebrate with family and friends.  There’s no gift-giving; you simply get to “be” with family and friends. And I dare say we need to spend more time with family and friends.
 
 As with all holidays and holy days, we need to reflect upon them in their proper context.  Thanksgiving Day isn’t just about parades, turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and football!  It’s about being thankful to God for all he has given us.  Because we live in such a busy and fast-paced world, it would be easy to breeze through Thanksgiving Day without pausing to thank God for all he has given us.  Going around the dinner table and asking people to share what they are thankful for would be a great way to start or end your gathering.
 
Thanksgiving Day (Part Two):  Please consider starting your Thanksgiving Day celebrations by joining us for mass at 9:00 a.m.  It’s a great way to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with your “church” family!  Parishioners from St. Lucy and Our Lady Star of the Sea parishes will join us as well.  As is our custom, the collection taken up at mass will be given to our local St. Vincent DePaul Society Conference.  Your contributions help our local Vincentians assist the poor and needy who live within our parish boundaries!
 
Thanksgiving Day (Part Three):  Over the years, Mitch Albom has written several thought-provoking columns about Thanksgiving.  I wanted to mention two of those columns here.  The first column was written in 2010; it was entitled, “The Turkey Shrinks as the Absences Grow.”  In this column, Mitch spoke about how missing Thanksgiving Day with family and friends was once unthinkable.  Years ago, Thanksgiving with family encompassed the whole weekend.  In recent years, he writes, “the holiday has been shaved, like one of those giant wedding cakes that slowly gets sliced away.”  Today, however, the turkey “shrinks” as the excuses trickle in.  People have all kinds of excuses why they can’t attend the usual family Thanksgiving Day (weekend) celebrations.  The saddest reality, as Mitch points out, is that people are missing the best part of Thanksgiving … being with family!  Mitch’s article is a great read and worth sharing with family and friends.  You can find this column at Mitch Albom’s website: mitchalbom.com; search for “The Turkey Shrinks.”
 
The second Mitch Albom column I wanted to call your attention to was written last year.  It’s entitled, “Empty chairs, empty table, but still Thanksgiving.”  In this column, Mitch mentioned how he decided to set an extra table for Thanksgiving.  It wasn’t for the kids or the extra desserts.  It wasn’t for the out-of-towners.  Rather, this table was for all those who “are no longer coming, all those who filled the house with laughter and stories and singing and arguments, and who, sadly, will never walk through the door again.”  Last year was the first time Mitch hosted his Thanksgiving Day celebrations without his parents.  “Now, like so many of my older relatives, my parents are gone.  But I can still see them.  Hear them.  So I’m setting a table.  Empty chairs.”  Mitch then takes a walk down memory lane and recalls the family members who once filled the seats at his family Thanksgiving Day dinners.  He recalls their stories, what they often wore, or brought.  Mitch profoundly recalls how Thanksgiving for his family was that once a year opportunity to gather both immediate and extended family for a long weekend.  It’s different now, he writes.  It’s not the same as it once was.  He also recalls how the absentees grow as he himself grows older.  “One by one, they disappeared from the Thanksgiving table, and each year we mourned the latest absentee, until the absentees outnumbered the original attendees…. All you can do is carry on and remember.  So I pull out the furniture and move it around, if only in my mind, which is where so much of this holiday lives.  Empty chairs.  Missing loved one.  Lord, how their voices once filled the room, as their echoes fill it now.”  This column can be found at Mitch Albom’s website: mitchalbom.com; search for “Empty Chairs.”

Thanksgiving Day (Part Four):  Several years ago, I found a great editorial column about Thanksgiving Day posted in the archives section of the New York Times website.  The piece was originally published on November 18, 1869.  Here are a few snippets:  “Thanksgiving is the Home Holiday.  We have no sweeter festival in the calendar…. We need more holidays in our American life.  We have many anniversaries, but few days sacred to friendship (and) faith …. This is the feast day of Family and of Friendship.  Many a truant son and daughter will cross seas and travel weary miles to sit in the old pew, and hear the familiar psalms, and gather around the fireside with those they love.  The real meaning of this day is Coming Home.  There are no traditional glories, no memories of sacred adventure or suffering to divide it.  It has but one embracing sentiment. ‘God has blessed us,’ we say, ‘and we thank Him in our homes.’  While we come together and thank God for his manifold kindness … let us remember that with our privileges there comes a duty always present, but in seasons like this, commanding and imperative.  In the fullness of our own joy we must not forget those who are poor and sick and cast down by bitter fortune. The Master to whom so many praises will be sung this morning showed no holier attribute of divinity than when he taught us that true Christianity gave clothing to the naked and food to the hungry, and opened the prison doors to those in bonds.  We have many prisons around us, where poverty and misfortune and hard necessity hold their victims with sterner grasp than with chains and bars.  It is for us to open these doors and break these bonds, to spread our substance and store, to lend the helping hand and bless the day with deeds of charity.  As we do to others so may we hope that others will do to us and our children.  This is the lesson of the day.  By its full observance we can make a true Thanksgiving, and show that the gifts we have received from the Father of all have not fallen upon hard and stony ground.”
 
Enjoy the week.  Know of my prayers.  A blessed Thanksgiving to you and your family!
 
In Christ,
 
gmb
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