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'Tis the Season for Thanks Pat Boone As I sit here writing on this holiday weekend, in the unaccustomed quiet and serenity of non-work weekdays, my heart and mind overflow with gratitude, recognizing (yet again) that "my cup runneth over."
My wife, my kids and grandkids, our home, and blessed opportunity to be with loved ones at this special time of our year. My upbringing, my crazy career, busloads of friends on most every level of life, amazing health, the ability to eat anything and everything I fancy, all the countless personal things that make my life unique. And beyond all this, I'm indescribably thankful for my country, that I was born in this blessed place, that I enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of every happiness; that with all the grief and terror and deadly threats in the air, we as a people can still congregate and plan and travel and build and buy and sell, and sculpt our own lives.
But wait.
Whom do I thank for all this?
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I feel the urge, the need, to thank whoever is responsible for my freedom, my happiness, my blessings. I believe I share this involuntary urge with millions of my fellow citizens. But where do I direct my thanksgiving?
The ACLU and other ultra-liberal activists are gradually erasing God (remember Him?) from public life, eliminating any mention of Him or reference to His words from buildings and monuments, even in graveyards, military, and otherwise.
They, with a tiny atheist minority, are committed to taking "under God" out of our pledge and "In God We Trust," our long-cherished national motto, off our currency. For all my life, and yours I expect, there were frequent everyday reminders that God was the source of our blessings in this country, and it was natural to take a day to offer thanksgiving — to Him.
In school, all kids were taught details of "the first Thanksgiving," in which our early forefathers dined with the Indians, sharing foods and customs and mutual faith in a Heavenly provider, the Great Spirit, the loving God of heaven and earth.
Most of us were encouraged to create our own drawings and images of what that event may have been like.
Remember? And all our lives, most families gathered in one home or another, enjoying each other around a table groaning with turkey and all kinds of fabulous foods — and then got silent for just a moment or two, bowed heads, and nodded in agreement while someone, usually Dad or Granddad, expressed the gratitude most were feeling for the food, the companionship, and the freedom to enjoy it all.
Now, if we continue to allow these relatively few militant revisionists to dictate our national and social policy, this picture, this hallowed tradition will just fade away, become a faint recollection, and finally disappear forever.
If I have my history straight, Thanksgiving Day was officially added to our national calendar by Congress when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, as a commemoration in its own right but also as an extension of the Christmas holiday season! Of course, the ACLU and their secularist cohorts are working diligently to remove Christ from Christmas, too, convincing most retailers and the networks to forget Christmas altogether, in favor of plain old "holiday" sales and celebrations, about nothing in particular.
Then the thought occurs: If there's no God to thank, what are we to do with this primal urge we feel to express gratitude?
After all, none of this matters, except for this existential moment, and what we enjoy must be just a matter of blind luck, happenstance, and maybe "natural selection," like what a lizard may feel in the sunlight on a rock somewhere.
"Thanksgiving?"
Forget it.
Just sensually enjoy whatever you feel or see or eat. You don't owe anybody anything. None of it means squat; so just eat, drink, and be merry if you can — because tomorrow you die, and you'll be forgotten like a dung beetle. Nobody will know you existed, and for all intents and purposes, you didn't.
Still, the urge, the impulse persists. So, for the poor modernist, that "enlightened" progressive who wants to say something around a table of like-minded relatives about to share a meal on the day once called "Thanksgiving," I offer a suggested "saying," not a prayer certainly, but a semblance of gratitude more politically correct for our times: "Well, this sure is nice; I want to thank . . . uh, my lucky stars, I guess . . . yeah, that's it; my lucky stars, for this food and the fact I'm not in North Korea or Iran or the desert of Sudan.
"Wow, we're lucky, aren't we folks? We've got jobs, people pay us for what we do; we've got houses and cars, clothes to wear, and all that stuff. No dictator is ordering us around, and we can go wherever we want, say whatever we like, and pretty much do whatever we darn well please. Just the roll of the dice, I guess; we're sure lucky we're not impoverished or dying in plague-infested Africa or something. Eat up, everybody — and thank our lucky stars! Amen . . . uh, I mean . . . Dig in!"
I guess I'm just old fashioned, too much a traditionalist. It feels so good, so right, to say out loud, "God in heaven, thank you for revealing Who You are to all who seek You and can read the evidence all around us, everywhere we look. Thank you for this living dream we call America, and all the blessings we enjoy because You instructed our forefathers through Your book. Thank you for liberty itself, and for revealing in Your word that ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' Please continue to have mercy on us in all our faults, and especially on those who so blindly and arrogantly deny Your existence. Help us to hold on to the freedoms so many have died for; we pray we won't just weakly let them be taken from us by naysayers and nonbelievers. We love You, Lord."
God's own declaration in Psalm 14 is, "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'" I close, this Thanksgiving, with the words of the noted philosopher, Mr. T: "I pity the fool."
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