Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you managed to get this far, you successfully dug this email out of the heap of Black Friday sales announcements! And while I hope you’ll read the whole thing, there are no “special deals” here that you don’t want to miss. From a Christian point of view, the best deal available to us today is just to do what it says on the tin: give thanks.

Thanksgiving is a holiday whose name indicates the thing we do, rather than the thing we’re celebrating. This is different from, say, Independence Day. On July 4, “independence” is a thing we remember and celebrate – but we don’t go about declaring it again. Labor Day is a day to remember labor, but ideally you don’t have to work. Most holidays function like that. Thanksgiving is different. Thanksgiving is a day set aside to do the giving of thanks.

This giving of thanks logically requires a recipient of the thanks. Our secular culture doesn’t know quite what to do with that, which is why we end up either thanking one another or we turn this into what should really be called “Naming-Things-We’re-Happy-About Day.” Naming things we’re happy about is a poor substitute for giving thanks.

We Christians know that ultimately the one to whom we give thanks is God and because the act of giving thanks puts us in touch with the recipient of that thanks, this means that Thanksgiving is a holy and spiritual act. So this day, when you are thankful for family and friends, satisfied by the food that has left you too full to roll off the couch, or even grateful you scored that online deal on a Christmas present – then give that thanks and gratitude to God Almighty. Make thanksgiving more than a feeling – make it a spiritual action.

And know this day that I give thanks to God for you, the faithful, generous, grace-giving people of St. Andrew’s, alongside whom my family and I get to walk the way of the Lord.

In Christ,
Fr. Andrew