The Thanksgiving holiday has long been my favorite. Early on, as extended family expected attendance on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Thanksgiving became a day to make our own. For many years, our table overflowed with friends and chosen family, with children’s friends and sometimes their siblings, with academic friends who could not get home and friends newly divorced and on their own for the first time.
Not since I was a child have I thought of “pilgrims and Indians,” with paper stovepipe hats and cornucopias and turkeys made from handprints as indicators of thanksgiving. Those customs had faded away by the time my own children were school, in the inner-city where there is generally more cultural sensitivity in the classrooms. I’m glad I am not attached to those images, which project such a false idea of how Europeans and Indigenous people actually interacted in the 17th Century. While I will joyfully celebrate my family with a hardy meal lovingly prepared on November 25, I am grateful to the Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth for providing an alternative Thanksgiving service on Thursday, November 18 6:30-7:45pm Central. You can click this link to register for the event https://api.neonemails.com/emails/content/4s7jlFXg4RX93_fMDyqdUN7uwZ-hbbR00E30ds3BcpE=
May your Day of Thanks be filled with love and gratitude and awareness that celebration for some is mourning for others, as you remember, today, and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so.
Blessings, Rev. Rita