![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/9\/98\/Thanksgiving-Brownscombe.jpg\/640px-Thanksgiving-Brownscombe.jpg\")
If there is any national holiday that is routinely overlooked, it is Thanksgiving.\u00a0In our intensely consumer-driven society, Christmas looms ever greater, bringing with it the pseudo-holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Each year, the jingles of commercialism threaten to drown out the message of gratitude which Thanksgiving celebrates.<\/p>\n
So with that in mind, I intend to\u00a0keep\u00a0a proper Thanksgiving this year, and every year. It is a time for food, a time for family, and\u00a0above all else a time to ponder on all the good things in our lives, and to\u00a0give thanks for them.<\/p>\n
According to tradition, the first Thanksgiving feast was made by the pilgrims in 1621, after their first good harvest in the New World. They had come to America seeking religious freedom, which had been denied them in Europe. Instead, they found a foreboding wilderness whose native inhabitants had been all but wiped out by the plague. There were no hospitals, no grocery stores, no internet\u2014no one except an English-speaking indian named Squanto to help them, and no way to send for help across the wide, dark Atlantic.<\/p>\n
It was a struggle just to survive. Many of them died. Those who lived\u00a0saw the hand of Providence in their survival, and after a bounteous harvest ensured that\u00a0they would have food for the winter, they dedicated a feast to acknowledging that Providence\u00a0that had saved them.<\/p>\n
In a lot of ways, the pilgrims are to America what the pioneers are to the Mormons. And interestingly enough, I have direct ancestors among the pilgrims as well as the Mormon pioneers. So for me, it’s more than just a nice\u00a0story: it’s a part of my family history that makes me who I am. And I suspect the same is true for many other readers of this blog.<\/p>\n
So in the spirit of that first Thanksgiving feast, here are the things that I am especially thankful for this year:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If there is any national holiday that is routinely overlooked, it is Thanksgiving.\u00a0In our intensely consumer-driven society, Christmas looms ever greater, bringing with it the pseudo-holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Each year, the jingles of commercialism threaten to drown out the message of gratitude which Thanksgiving celebrates. So with that in mind, I… Continue reading Giving Thanks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Giving Thanks","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1018,529,1017,599],"class_list":["post-10166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family-history","tag-indie-publishing","tag-thanksgiving-2015","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2DY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10218,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10166\/revisions\/10218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}