WILL SELLERS: Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart!

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday.

In fact, while a few other countries have a national day for prayer or thankfulness, nothing truly resembles our Thanksgiving Day. Europe, with its more established countries, scoffs at such a notion of commemorating the virtue or emotion of Thanksgiving.

They might celebrate national accomplishments like successful harvests, vanquishing enemies, and religious observations. A day for Thanksgiving related to the passing of a particular calamity might occur every now and again, but having an annual, nationally observed day is only something the brash, provincial, unsophisticated Americans would do. It seems against the dignity of a strong country to cancel work and devote a day to appreciation.

To be thankful is to acknowledge vulnerability. Giving thanks notes that whatever success or achievement an individual or nation may have obtained was not accomplished alone. To celebrate thankfulness is to pause and reflect on all things, both good and bad, and realize that in the midst of it all lies an achievement resulting from the assistance of someone or something else.

The distorted perception of self-made people is that they made it all by themselves. They see their achievements as something of their own making and discount the assistance of others. They become so self-absorbed and so consumed by an inflated ego that to acknowledge anything less than a solo performance is unthinkable, perhaps even humiliating.

Thanksgiving to them is cultural — to act appreciatively without being truly thankful. This is best summed up by the blessing given by Jimmy Stewart’s character of Charlie Anderson in the movie “Shenandoah,” who said:

“Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here; we wouldn’t be eating it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for the food we’re about to eat. Amen.”

We read this and chuckle, but that is how some people feel. Their thanks is a grudging tribute to a cultural norm that invokes a blessing not as returning thanks, but as a requirement, masked to further claim credit for achievement.