11/30/07
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.
It’s right up there with Christmas and Easter. There’s always good food and time off from school, those aren’t the reasons I like it though.
It’s a holiday about family and a holiday about being grateful, something we quite frequently are not.
It also ushers in the Christmas season, which is another time of family togetherness and celebration, of lights and joyful noises, of milk and cookies and midnight masses.
The Christmas season, too, can be a time to remember how fortunate you probably are in comparison with some people in your town, or many people in the world.
These holidays point out this good fortune.
That is, in fact, the purpose of Thanksgiving and seems to have become the purpose of Christmas. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems strange we “give thanks” for what we have by consuming it.
Shouldn’t we be giving back-giving to the community, or giving to those who are less fortunate than we are?
Some people of course do give back, especially during the holiday season.
People do throw money in the Salvation Army pots after buying Christmas presents and do donate warm clothing to the Rescue Mission. But the culture is still centered on consumption.
Perhaps the best book I read this past summer (so good that I’m still thinking about it six months later) was “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver.
The story was wonderful (though tragic) and the writing was beautiful, but the thing that sticks out most in my mind is one line from the very first chapter of the 500-page novel: “Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t, but we wear it all the same. There is only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?”
I’ve been asking myself that question ever since.
If you go to Baker, chances are you’re pretty fortunate.
I don’t mean that you are wealthy, or even that you are not in debt. Our fortune is evident in other ways.
Take supermarkets, for example.
Now that I do my grocery shopping at the Baldwin City Market, I’m kind of amazed whenever I walk into the Dillons back home by the huge displays of fruits and vegetables and the numerous choices that are available in every product from applesauce to zipper bags. Even the BCM, with its relative lack of selection, is pretty amazing.
One can still choose between three or four brands of canned corn, all sterilely packaged, all ready to eat. And chances are, you can afford it.
The question “How do we aim to live with it?” suggests a similarity between fortune and guilt, which people often describe as something one “has to live with.”
Should we feel guilty for our fortune?
Should we feel bad for eating large helpings of turkey and pie on Thanksgiving if we are able to? Should parents say to their kids, “We’ve been feeding and clothing you all year, so we’ve decided to ship your Christmas presents to needy children in Africa”?
One could take up the question with any number of philosophers and would probably receive a wide variety of answers.
The issue of guilt, though, is not really the point.
The point is we must feel grateful, and realize we must do more than feel grateful.
Thanking God (or fate or chance) for our fortune by eating the evidence of it is not enough.
We must ask ourselves the “one question worth asking;” hopefully, the answer is not just “pass the gravy.”