This column is a thanksgiving for Thanksgiving, a paean to the one holiday that retains much of its integrity and possibility of authentic observance. Thanksgiving has been neither totally commodified nor completely absorbed into a long weekend about boats, spectator sports and other recreational indulgences.

Thanksgiving is still manageable. Exhaustion does not threaten to overtake us as we race the countdown to its arrival. While the scale of observance is simple, Thanksgiving's meanings are rich and multifaceted: as a national holy day; as a link with our pastoral past; as an event largely characterized by family gatherings; and, finally, as a foundational spiritual theme.

Thanksgiving has to be the quintessential civil religious holy day. The American civil religion can be described as the religious dimension of the national experience. It exists alongside of, but is differentiated from, the religion of church, synagogue or mosque. Much of its imagery and symbolism derives from biblical themes (early ideas of America as a "New Israel," with the American citizen as the "new American Adam," followed by interpretations of the Civil War as the "national crucifixion," the "nation's atonement"). It has its own scriptures (the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution); its holy days (Fourth of July, Memorial Day); its sacred spaces (Arlington Cemetery, Valley Forge, Gettysburg); its saints (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, et al.). You get the idea.

Thanksgiving, a national holiday created by Congress and renewed each year by presidential proclamation, is embedded in our memories of the Plymouth Colony of 1621 as well as of similar sporadic local observances, notably in Virginia and Spanish Florida. Washington proclaimed the first national thanksgiving after the American Revolution in 1789, and Lincoln revived the custom in 1863. Thanksgiving is uniquely a nonsectarian national religious holiday. It is the most natural occasion for a genuinely interfaith service.

Thanksgiving also is a link with our pastoral or town-and-country past. Harvest festivals are not natural annual observances in postmodern urban/suburban life, but they are part of the national memory and are holy days that are well nigh universal among the world's religions. There is for many of us the need for renewal that comes from direct engagement with nature. My idea of the way to spend the day after Thanksgiving - the heaviest shopping day of the year - is as far away from Wal-Mart or the malls as possible: in the woods or on the river. Seasonal themes based on nature's rhythms - "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest … shall not cease" - continue to feed our spirits.

Thanksgiving is primarily a family affair. The ministry of hospitality - extending the family - is also highlighted. In our immediate family, Thanksgiving dinners came to be associated with family and with students who were away from home. The holiday plugs into that aspect of spirituality centered in being together at the table.

This holiday, finally, is about gratitude. The Eucharistic Meal, the central act of religious expression for many Christians, is basically a communal "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." I wonder whether gratitude is not the foundation of religious piety. Period. For many the realization that life is a gift has provided the stimulus for serious spiritual inquiry. Thankfulness should be the standpoint from which we seek to understand life.

And it should also be how we seek to understand death. The late Abraham Joshua Heschel, arguably the most influential Jewish theologian in 20th-century America, wrote that the meaning of death is to be understood as our gift back to God: as "reciprocity on our part for God's gift of life. For the pious person it is a privilege to die." Think about it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

© 2003, Tallahassee Democrat (Tallahassee, Fla.).

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