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Thanksgiving:
The Holiday of Abundance
Harvest sure doesn’t look like it used to. It used to be a time when we worked really hard to pull in the crops and also prepared them for winter storage. It took a lot of people working together to reap the full harvest without losing any of it to spoilage. Men were breaking their backs pulling it all in from the fields and women were breaking their backs canning, freezing, and drying it so that it didn’t all go to waste. Things are very different now. For most of us, harvest just means there is a different set of vegetables available at the grocery store. We don’t have to break our backs digging up and hauling it all in and putting it all into storage. I for one, find that cause enough to celebrate and give thanks! The change of seasons at this time of year causes me to reflect on what our modern day harvest is really all about.
What is it that we are harvesting now? And how do we go about harvesting it? And why? We have rolled up our sleeves and worked just as hard, but at things that on the surface seem very different. We worked all year to create homes and the resources to feed and clothe our families. We have celebrated births and we have mourned deaths. We have worked on finding balance between work and play, between self and others, between commitment and detachment, and between freedom and security. We have suffered losses and we have enjoyed victories. We have stored away a rainy day savings or we haven’t. We have reaped a bountiful harvest or we have frittered our time away. Now is the time of year that we reflect on what we have actually accomplished and who helped us along the way.
Gazing out the window watching the leaves fall off the trees, I ask myself these questions. What seeds did you sow this year? Did you do the work necessary to reap the full possible harvest? Who helped you? Who did you help? Is there anything you could learn from this last year that would make next year’s harvest bigger, better, easier? What did you harvest for yourself and for your loved ones this year? What abundance did you share? How much have you set aside for those dark rainy days? Did you remember to thank people along the way? Did you appreciate the sunshine? The rains? Are you ready for the winter season?
I don’t know about you, but I have also just come to realize that I tend to forgive people who have wronged me in some way after I have spent time thinking about my blessings and how grateful I am to have received them. My attitude tends to soften and I tend to rethink my feelings towards certain people. When I hear of someone I have been angry at over the last year not having anyone to share their holiday season with, I tend to feel sorry for them rather than gloating over how beautifully karma works. Given whatever circumstances, I forgive them as much as I can and may or may not open my doors to them at that point in time.
My daydreaming naturally drifts off towards turkey dinners of the past. Those musings easily slip over into thoughts of the next bird I’m going to stuff and what to fix with it and who to invite. I then realize that the large Thanksgiving dinner we prepare is really a metaphor for sharing our abundance and is a symbol of our appreciation for the gifts that we have received. Don’t we wish to share the abundance ceremony with our loved ones who have brought so many blessings into our lives over the last year? I snicker to myself as I notice the way we grumble and complain when we have to share our feast with people who screw with our ability to harvest a wonderful life.
Look back in history and you will find that most cultures have some kind of giving back to say thank you ceremony during the fall season. Some cultures give the best of their abundance to a god or leader of some kind for blessing them. Others break bread with their loved ones to thank each other for sticking together and enduring another year of life’s ups and downs. Families, like the different cultures, have their own little ceremonies and traditions wrapped around the harvest festival we call Thanksgiving. On some level, we seem to know that we have to give back as a form of saying thank you.
Do we do this annual thank you ceremony because it is some kind of a cosmic requirement or is it just human nature? Does saying thank you insure future years will experience abundance? No, we all know that famine happens. It is part of the life cycle. Okay, but it might not be human nature either because I know plenty of people who are not thankful nor appreciative of anything nor anyone. So why do we do this? Why have we celebrated an abundance festival throughout the history of mankind? Is it rooted in our superstitious scared little minds that if we don’t, some force bigger and stronger than us will come down and force us to experience lack and loss? Regardless of why we do it, it does not hurt anything and it actually feels really good to sit and ponder our blessings and to give thanks for it. Maybe that is all we need to keep us doing it, it simply feels good and that is cause enough.
It is my belief that the thankful attitudes we experience during the Thanksgiving holiday are what motivate us to overspend at Christmas time. During Thanksgiving we sit and contemplate how thankful we are and to whom and why. Then, we end our year with a grand finale of gift giving. Come January, we find ourselves making resolutions, goals, plans, and vows for the next year. To everything, a season and a time.
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