Finding hope for the holidays

Thanksgiving is tomorrow.

For many of us, this year’s holiday has a hollow ring to it.

This is supposed to be the day of celebrating a good harvest – whether you measure that harvest in crops or cash – and of making the kitchen table groan with food. It’s supposed to be a day of prosperity, a gesture to the extravagant.

But for many of us, this Thanksgiving has come in a basket from the food bank, or on a credit card in danger of being maxxed out.

As alone as we may feel, we’re not the first Americans to have faced the holidays with fear.

We’ve observed Thanksgiving through the Great Depression, the Civil War, and two world wars. We’ve made cakes without butter, rationed nylon and alcohol, found ways to make less food feed more family. We’ve raised vegetables in gardens, because we either couldn’t get them, or afford them, elsewhere.

If there is a common thread running through these chapters of need, it is this: All of these things have passed.

They are no more than poignant memories and stories in our history books.

So too is it with the state of our economy. It’s not good right now, but it won’t be like this forever.

Unfortunately, many of us (myself included) find it so easy to extrapolate the current troubles we face far out into the future. But we shouldn’t be.

This will pass. It will take time, but the cyclical nature of our economy means we will ride this out.

In the meantime, we can remember the value of things that don’t cost money.

A funny story shared with family or friends.

A church service.

A walk in the park.

A game of pick-up basketball after dinner.

A football game on TV.

Too many times we forget, with all the advertising and pressure, and all the bad news, what we should be giving each other.

Not expensive chocolate or vintage wines. Not a multi-course dinner.

What we need most of all is simply the hope and happiness that comes from sharing each other’s company. In many ways, we are all in the same boat, and the ripple that rocks one rocks us all.

So stop the worrying. At least for this one day.

We’re all going to make it, one way or another.

Not because of victories

I sing,

having none,

but for the common sunshine,

the breeze,

the largess of the spring.

Not for victory

but for the day’s work done

as well as I was able;

not for a seat upon the dais

but at the common table.

Charles Reznikoff, “Te Deum”