The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
Thank God For Thanksgiving
From a child's perspective Thanksgiving has never had too much to offer.
Standing alone as a holiday, apart from the heavyweights of Christmas and Easter, it was nice enough I suppose - certainly better than Columbus Day or Presidents Day or any other third tier holiday on the American calender. But growing up, Thanksgiving kind of lingered back there on tier two, somewhere between Memorial Day, (school was ending soon), and July 4th. Even Halloween and Valentines Day, which came and went like flashes in the proverbial pan, at least offered the promise of candy.
All Thanksgiving meant was that you were likely going to have to memorize some poem having to do with the pilgrims and how to plant corn. Other than that it was pretty much about eating turkey and mashed potatoes and green peas.
Great.
There was some pretty weird stuff being served up with all that bland fare as well - tomato aspic, cranberry sauce and sauerkraut. Not to mention the "oyster casserole." Nothing was worse than digging hard into this dish thinking it was merely the stuffing and winding up with a mouthful of what to a child might as well have been a bunch of dead frogs. My siblings and I all made at least one mad dash to the bath room after making this rookie mistake. If you ever see a small child forking around through his stuffing, it's a safe bet he's already misjudged his first oyster casserole.
If you survived the main course you were invariably offered some of that gelatin stuff with the little fruit bits inside that never tasted nearly as good as it looked. Eventually you learned to forgo this mirage of a dessert and hold out for the pumpkin pie. But it wasn't exactly one of the Hershey Bars that you had been able to procure by the bagful a couple of weeks before. It had the consistency of the rotten persimmons that fell from our tree in the back yard and tasted like old pumpkins smelled, but relative to the rest of the fare it was a reasonable step up. Whoever coined the phrase, "any port in a storm", probably did so while scooping into a piece of pumpkin pie.
But the "storm" that was Thanksgiving as a young child would begin to give way to fairer memories as we grew older. For me and my brothers and sister it was the promise of weekend journeys to my Grandparent's house in West Virginia. We were blessed with numerous cousins close in age to us, and these trips generally became 3 day tournaments of ping pong, tether ball, badminton and any number of 1960's board games.
We also played backyard football, (The "Turkey Bowl"), with reckless abandon, and I'll never forget my Grandmother's amazement as she, (who had raised four girls), watched us gleefully tackle and pummel each other for hours on end. My Grandfather was an orthopedic Surgeon, and while he was never forced to display the full breadth and depth of his skills, his knowledge came in handy on several occasions.
"No need for x-rays there son... we'll just pack that with a little ice for a few minutes and you'll be fine... here, have another piece of pumpkin pie..."
Thanksgiving's stock continued to rise with our age and by the time we hit our teens it had earned a solid spot in my book as the number two holiday behind Christmas. From my teen view of the world, Easter had long since faded back to the second tier level - being replaced by newcomer "New Years", that fit so neatly in the 1-2-3 sequence that was "The Holidays." The allure of chocolate bunnies had faded, and besides, I was as ill prepared then as I am now, to fully understand that the creator of the universe was willing to redeem a fallen creation by sacrificing himself so horrifically in the world of space and time.
Easter became difficult concepts like "The Transfiguration", "Good Friday" and "Redemption." New Years was the carefree, joyous celebration of a new beginning. They were both pretty much about the same thing. I just didn't know it yet.
But Christmas still remained bright and alive and festooned with all its happy traditions, and even the idea of God coming into the world as a humble and lowly child somehow rang true and real amongst all the pageantry that surrounded it. But truthfully, the Christmases of my young adulthood had a great deal less to do with things of the Spirit as they did with the grand party of life that was a continuous series of weekend outings and late nights with family and friends. If celebrating was what it was all about we had that down just fine. Thankfully, the Spirit was with us more than we knew.
At some point in my college years I actually began to look forward to Thanksgiving as much as I did the Christmas holiday, and I think I recognized it on some level as perhaps the time at which I was closest to being a "Christian"- whatever that was to me then, or is now. Perhaps it was / is because Thanksgiving has somehow managed to stay true to its spirit - never being surrounded by the wretched orgy of commercialism that has besieged Christmas and Easter.
Ironic, that the one major holiday that was born of a simple celebration of thanks has remained free and clear of that which would detract us from its deepest meaning. While the two most important events celebrated on the Christian calender have, in their modern cultural context, all but been stripped of the truth they once pointed to - barely recognizable, if they still are at all, beneath the plasticine figures and ticker tape receipts that scroll endlessly forward counting our failed attempts at material happiness.
But that's the way life works isn't it. If there is evidence of the movement of God's Spirit in the events of this world, perhaps it is best seen in his ability to work through and around even our worst schemes and ideas, (the building of shrines in the light of the transfiguration - the telling of irrelevant fairy tales as the light of the world is given), and to reach us in ways we never imagined.
The elaborate and excessive meal and the gathering of family that is the focus of Thanksgiving is a wonderfully appropriate celebration of such extravagant love. Thank goodness it has survived, and that we are allowed to grow in our understanding of what is real and meaningful in life.
I don't know about you, but I plan on digging in deep this year and eating heavily until I am well beyond "replete."
Especially the oyster casserole. It is now, of course, my favorite.