by Carol Flett

Created on: November 09, 2010

Of the many holidays the American people celebrate, one stands out above all others as being totally their own. That holiday is Thanksgiving. Any question of doing away with Thanksgiving is as unpatriotic as changing the constitution, and yet people dare to suggest it.

Thanksgiving was created during a crucial time in the life of a floundering new nation. America was a land promise to many people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs. America offered freedom, and many gambled their life for a chance at that freedom.

The life of the first settlers was hard beyond what our pampered minds can imagine. Think of living today without gas or electricity, without grocery stores or social services, without even a well insulated house to get through the cold harsh winters. Think of having no food in your cupboards and no food bank to draw from.

Think also of losing most of your family and friends to sickness and death. Think of the total despair many of those settlers must have felt.

Those early settlers at Plymouth Rock were in a desperate situation. There was no food. There was no hope of receiving any. There were no hospitals for their dying loved ones. Without help, the whole colony would be wiped out. But God sent help in the form of friendly natives, and the colony was spared. Do we dare, from our position of affluence, remove that story from our celebrated history simply because it acknowledges the intervention of the God the Pilgrims risked their lives to serve?

Are we becoming like the countries the Pilgrims fled from? They suffered religious persecution in the old country. They couldn't teach their children what they believed was right without fear of severe punishment or death. The Pilgrims were not allowed to freely practice their beliefs, and so they left, choosing rather to endure hunger and sickness and, in many cases, death in order to have freedom to worship, and teach their children to worship, as their conscience dictated. Are we now seeking to do away with the celebration they founded simply because it reminds us that we are becoming the persecutor?

Or are we so hardened by our affluence that we feel no need to be thankful? Is thankfulness a redundant word now that we have so much? Do we assume that since the battles were won so long ago, and we now have an abundance of food on our table, thankfulness is out of date?

Don't we realize that everything we have could be taken from us in an instant, and the fact that we still have plenty is a daily, hourly reason to be thankful? Maybe Thanksgiving should not be a holiday after all. Maybe we should trade the single day of celebration for thanksgiving daily all year long.

But no, Thanksgiving needs to be a Government acclaimed holiday. Our country as a whole needs to officially recognize Thanksgiving as a time to be thankful for the many blessings we have, or we may some day find ourselves in a worse situation than the Pilgrim Fathers. Let's not let it happen. Let's be truly thankful.

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