Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Thanksgiving: the best holiday
Thanksgiving: the best holiday
Jul 9, 2025 7:15 AM

In sports, there is a debate (between interesting and inane) about the meaning of a “Most Valuable Player” award: is it the best “individual” player (often measured in terms of a handful of statistics) or the player who is most valuable to his team (without that player, the team would not be nearly as good)?

The same could be said for holidays. For Christians, the “greatest” holidays are Christmas, Good Friday, and especially, Easter. But I’d argue that Thanksgiving is still the “best” holiday.

Christmas has a lot of cultural and consumerist baggage. Good Friday is vital but not the end of the story. And Easter gets overlooked easily– and in any case, doesn’t have an easy or appropriate way to celebrate it.

But Thanksgiving– at least in its ideal form– is awesome. It’s a time for extended family to gather and reflect, a four-day weekend which begins with gratitude and ends with worship, a grand opportunity to enjoy the fruit of the earth bination with creative human preparation, and most of all, a time to enjoy God’s blessings and “give thanks”.

In this sense, Thanksgiving is like every other great holiday. It is meant to be a special celebration of that which we should celebrate every day. From Valentines Day to Mothers Day, from Veterans Day to July 4th, we set aside certain days for explicit celebration. But at the same time, the “event” is meant to be a continuous “lifestyle”– to celebrate, remember, or observe each of these every day of our lives. In this sense, all holidays are perhaps best understood through their etymology– as “holy days”– special but emblematic.

Speaking of etymology, I’m not certain that the words “grace” and “gratitude” are related. (A quick flip through my Websters does not resolve the question.) But they are certainly related conceptually. One angle on the Gospel is that Christians are grateful for God’s offer of grace and are then drawn to feeling and expressing graciousness in every aspect of their lives.

Thanksgiving allows Christians to celebrate God’s grace in its many forms– from the mon grace” extended to all to the providential graces of history through God’s sovereignty, from the universal grace available to all in Jesus Christ to the specific graces afforded to each of us in our daily lives.

In a sense, then, Thanksgiving allows us to celebrate Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter in one fell swoop. If so, maybe Thanksgiving is both the best and the greatest holiday of them all.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Wisdom & Wonder At Hearts & Minds Books
We are excited about our friend, Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds Books, carrying Wisdom & Wonder, “the long-awaited, freshly-translated, newly-produced, collection of newspaper pieces that Dr. Kuyper wrote so many years ago.” This book is a part of the larger mon grace” work that we are in the process of translating. We hope to have Volume 1 available by Fall 2012. Click herefor more information on the Kuyper Translation Project. Nicholas Woltersdorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology...
VIDEO: Margaret Thatcher Honored at Annual Dinner
Now up for your viewing pleasure, John O’Sullivan’s acceptance of our Faith & Freedom Award on behalf of Margaret Thatcher, and Rev. Robert Sirico’s remarks at the dinner. Mr. O’Sullivan, Lady Thatcher’s speechwriter and advisor, painted a warm, personal portrait of his former boss — at times he had us in stitches, and when he finished, we were all inspired. The dinner was given at the JW Marriott Hotel in Grand Rapids on October 20; if you couldn’t make it,...
A Thanksgiving for the Harvest
Most gracious God, by whose knowledge the depths are broken up and the clouds drop down the dew: We yield thee hearty thanks and praise for the return of seed time and harvest, for the increase of the ground and the gathering in of its fruits, and for all other blessings of thy merciful providence bestowed upon this nation and people. And, we beseech thee, give us a just sense of these great mercies, such as may appear in our...
Safety Nets and Incentives
Over at the Economix blog, University of Chicago economist Casey B. Mullin takes another look at some of the recent poverty numbers. He notes the traditional interpretation, that “the safety net did a great job: For every seven people who would have fallen into poverty, the social safety net caught six.” But another interpretation might have a bit more going for it, actually, and fits in line with my previous analogy between a safety net as a trampoline vs. a...
On Blue Laws and Black Friday
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Author: DustinIn this week’s Acton Commentary, “Blue Laws and Black Friday,” I argue that the increasing encroachment mercial activity into holidays like Thanksgiving are best seen as questions of morality and the limits of the economic sphere of existence. The remedy for such issues is best sought at the level of relationship (between consumer and retailer, for instance, as well as employer and employee) rather than at the level of legal remedy, as in...
True Philanthropy and Faith-Based Initiatives
Over at Patheos’ Black, White and Gray blog, where a group of Christian sociologists “share our observations and research and reflect on its meaning for Christian faith and practice,” Margarita A. Mooney writes about “Faith-Based Social Services: An Essential Part of American Civil Society.” Many of the points she raises echo the principles of passion that have long animated the Acton Institute’s engagement with welfare reform and social service. Be sure to check out the Hope Award program sponsored by...
Occupy Business Careers?
In a recent BBC article, Sean Coughlan reports a novel idea from Oxford academic Will Crouch, He argues that someone ing an investment banker could create sufficient wealth to make philanthropic donations that could make a bigger difference than someone choosing to work in a “moral” career such as an aid charity. Indeed, there seems to be an ever increasing suspicion, even among Christians, that certain career paths are per se more moral than others. However, as Fr. Robert Sirico...
Samuel Gregg: Eurocracy Run Amuck
At National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observes that “much of Europe’s political class seems willing to go to almost any lengths to save the euro — including, it seems, beyond the bounds permitted by EU treaty law and national constitutions.” Excerpt: “We must re-establish the primacy of politics over the market.” That sentence, spoken a little while ago by Germany’s Angela Merkel, sums up the startlingly unoriginal character of the approach adopted by most EU politicians as...
Check out AU Online!
Last week, the Acton Institute Programs Department launched registration for an exciting project called AU Online. If you haven’t already visited the website, I encourage you to do so! AU Online is an internet-based educational resource for exploring the intellectual foundations of freedom and virtue. It is designed to offer the munity another way to experience the first class content and interaction of an Acton sponsored event while at home, at the office, or at school. We’re currently accepting registrations...
A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Far
Glenn Barkan, retired dean of Aquinas College’s School of Arts and Sciences here in Grand Rapids, had a piece worth reading in the local paper over the weekend related the current trend (fad?) toward buying local. In “What’s the point of buying local?” Barkan cogently addresses three levels of the case for localism in a way that shows that the movement need not have the economic, environmental, or ethical high ground. At the economic level, Barkan asks, “Does the local...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved