Giving thanks in secular, holy ways By James Carroll

[YankeyMCC]

Boston Globe

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THANKSGIVING IS the preferred American holiday not just because it is free of commercial pressures, denominational exclusiveness, and the insatiable longing of children. A month shy of the winter solstice, it is also less prone to inflict seasonal affective disorder, but that does not explain its appeal either. Nor does its distance from the frenzy of New Year’s. Thanksgiving’s place at the center of national good feeling might seem to derive from the sweet, if ahistorical, morality tale of amity between Pilgrims and native peoples. As the universal occasion of family reunion, what else is needed to account for its sanctity?


Sanctity: there’s the clue. Even a secular age desires holiness, and religious people, for their part, want holiness shorn of the normal hypocrisies of organized religion. At Thanksgiving, the secular and religious impulses, usually taken to be antagonists, salute each other with respect. Their spheres overlap. The holiday is built around gratitude, which is nothing less than the great human opening to transcendence, however defined.
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When religious folks take proper note of the transcendent gratitude of those for whom “God’’ is not necessary, believers, too, can be more open to the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving. One can leap too quickly to the other world, shortchanging this one. The overflowing banquet table is nothing if not worldly, gloriously so. Giving thanks to and for the ones with whom we gather is thus a profoundly secular act. But the great religions all say that such rare heartiness is enough - that loving gratefulness among humans is the only thanks that God ever wanted in the first place.
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/11/23/giving_thanks_in_secular_holy_ways/