November 20, 2024 // Perspective

Thanks Be to God

Ken Hallenius

Back in the early 1990s, a major fast-food chain lured patrons in by promising that they would encounter “Food, folks, and fun.” There was even a catchy little song to go with it, an earworm that occasionally still pops into my head 35 years later. Perhaps when I was a child and indoor food-themed playgrounds were the highlight of the meal, such an invitation to hang out at the local Mickey D’s might have appealed to me, but looking back now, it’s hard to believe that the dubious ambience of plastic tables, bright lights, and hard chairs were being used as a selling point to hawk chicken nuggets and hamburgers.

And yet we do love to gather with family and friends for meals that are about more than just the food itself. Our national holiday of Thanksgiving is not just about the turkey and the stuffing and the gravy and the cranberry sauce and the pie, as important and essential as all of those things are (at least in my family’s observance). There are also accompanying rituals that we engage in year after year as part of the holiday, which include brining the turkey, baking the dinner rolls in advance, going to Mass, vacuuming the living room, putting olives on the ends of each of my fingers, dressing in sweatpants to forestall the inevitable waistline strain, and finally, passing out with a contented smile in front of the TV at the end of the day.

As a national holiday, Thanksgiving is a longstanding American tradition. We are familiar with the story of the Native Americans and the Pilgrims sharing a harvest festival in the early years after the Europeans arrived in the New World, with the Natives providing most of the food for the feast. But the roots of giving thanks to God for blessings received stretch back much, much further than those first Thanksgivings in Virginia.

Each fall, our Jewish brothers and sisters observe Sukkot, the “Festival of Booths (or Huts),” as a commemoration of both the 40 years of wandering in the desert and living in temporary huts, and as the celebration of the harvest when the firstfruits would be offered to God as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

As Catholics, we’re pretty accustomed to feasting, especially through celebrating the saints. Nearly every day of the year, there is a saint who could be celebrated, though we limit the number of celebrations in order to also observe the rhythm of the liturgical seasons. We practice a principle of “progressive solemnity,” in which who we celebrate and the level of that celebration is based on how prominent the saint is for the local community, whether because of personal connection or patronage. American saints are celebrated with a higher solemnity in the United States than they might be beyond our borders. For example, the November 13 feast of the first American saint, Francis Xavier Cabrini, is prominent in America, while members of the worldwide Augustinian Order instead celebrate the birthday of their patron, St. Augustine, on that day.

The number of feasts on the modern liturgical calendar is quite sparse when compared to various points in the Church’s history. In mid-16th century England, for example, the calendar featured 95 feast days (plus Sundays) that were observed as holidays (or more appropriately, holy days), with the celebration of Masses and the banning of unnecessary work. That averaged out to nearly two additional non-work days every week, celebrated with prayer, leisure, and feasting.

The very word Thanksgiving has a special meaning to Catholics as well, because it is the translation of the Greek word “Eucharist.” Our celebration of the Eucharist at Mass is our highest act of thanksgiving to God, as we offer back the greatest gift that He has given to us: His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. In the familiar words of the Second Eucharistic Prayer, we hear, “Therefore, as we celebrate the memorial of His death and resurrection, we offer you, Lord, the bread of life and the chalice of salvation, giving thanks that you have counted us worthy to be in your presence and minister to you.”

The act of thanksgiving that we celebrate in the Mass is, like the national holiday of Thanksgiving, also accompanied by personal or family rituals of preparation and conclusion. We may put on special clothes (our so-called “Sunday best”), sit in the same spot or pew each week, pray a regular set of prayers before Mass begins, and have a selection of post-Mass prayers that we offer before we leave the church. These rituals, often learned from our parents, help personalize the faith of the universal Church and make it our own.

In contrast to the Thanksgiving meal that we celebrate around the dining room table that leaves us so stuffed that we don’t want to think about food ever again, the Eucharistic thanksgiving that we share at the altar nourishes us here in the present and also makes us hunger more deeply for what the Eucharist is a foretaste of: the heavenly banquet, where we will be gathered with all the saints and angels to praise the Lamb of God, our passover and our sacrifice. That is food, folks, and fun truly worth singing about.