Not long ago the on-air Today Show staff members were asked which holiday was their favorite. Each one said, “Thanksgiving.” Matt Lauer said it is “by far … by far” his favorite. I couldn't help but register some surprise and even mild offense that Christmas didn't make at least one person's most favorite list.
Perhaps it was the pressure public figures feel to maintain political correctness that influenced their responses. Or maybe they are all addicted to serotonin produced by the tryptophan in turkeys. Serotonin in the brain is supposed to produce a sense of well-being and peace.
I began to compare and contrast Thanksgiving and Christmas as seasons and as holidays. Food? Check. Plenty in both seasons. Serotonin junkies can stay high all month. Family? Check. There's no place like home for the holidays. Football? Check. The gridiron gladiators will suit up for both occasions. Fun? Check. It largely depends on the family, however.
Jim White
I even had trouble separating the purpose for the holidays. From the Christian point of view, what is the purpose of celebrating the birth of Jesus if not to give thanks for the incarnation?
I then began to contrast the two holidays. Decorations? At the risk of sounding decidedly grinch-like, we do not have whole sections of our house devoted to the storage of Thanksgiving decorations. It does not take days to pull them out and set them up, and consequently, I do not dread the thought of repeating the process in reverse to pack them away. To decoraphiles I know I am speaking heresy. I confess and seek absolution.
Expense? Truth be told, Thanksgiving is not a retailer's dream. In some households some memento may be given at the holiday mealtime. Friends of ours give to each person sharing their Thanksgiving meal a Christmas ornament. But, generally speaking, once you get past the cost of preparing the meal or the price of gasoline you use getting to it, you're home free, so to speak.
Christmas on the other hand is spelled M-O-N-E-Y to retailers and D-E-B-T to many revelers. It extends the joy of giving to excess and makes it burdensome (not in all cases, of course, but in many). Except for those few families who set strict limits and have discipline enough to stay within the boundaries they establish, Christmas hits us in the pocketbook—hard.
Exhaustion? By the time I finish my final piece of Cool Whip-slathered pumpkin pie my right arm is exhausted. The repeated lifting of forkfuls eventually wears a person down. But the exhaustion of Christmas is different. It is spread over the course of a month and intensifies as the day draws nearer — often culminating with a shopping, wrapping and assembling marathon on Christmas Eve. And it's not just physical.
Stress? In the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale, Christmas creates 12 points. Thanksgiving isn't listed. Maybe it's the tryptophan. The menus, the logistics involved in preparing and scheduling, the fretfulness over what to get for whom, the worry over finances and the frustration of trying to discover where you hid those perfect gifts you bought in July create anxiety in the Christmas celebrations.
Duration? Thanksgiving — 4 days. Christmas — 4 weeks (or more). Perhaps this gets at the heart of the differences. Christmas, the way we typically celebrate it, has become a season of excess. Even the length of the season has become too much of a good thing.
Merchandising? When was the last time you visited a Thanksgiving Mouse store open year-round? Merchants, of course, have a vested interesting in extending the season and enticing us to spend beyond our means. In a sense, Christmas got pirated somewhere along the way by profiteers responding to opportunity. We can hardly blame them for attempting to create a demand they can then charge us for supplying.
Biblically speaking, aside from the Nazareth to Bethlehem narrative in Luke and the description of the Magi “after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea” in Matthew 2:1, the Bible is silent about the details of Jesus' birth. It isn't, of course, that his birth was not important, but it was his life and, more to the point, his death and resurrection that caught the New Testament writers' attentions.
The word Christmas never appears in the Bible and a celebration on the anniversary of his birth is unknown in the New Testament-era church. On the other hand, although it does not apply to a specific holiday, thanksgiving appears 27 times in the King James Version of the Bible and “give thanks” appears another 39 times. And, the word most often associated with the Lord's Supper is the Greek word eucharist which appears in its various forms dozens of times in the New Testament.
From the Pentateuch to the Revelation of John God's people are encouraged to — even exhorted to — give thanks.
The process of counting our blessings and acknowledging with gratitude our debt to God (and even to others) makes us better people. Understanding that we are only partially responsible for most of what we hold undeniably dear makes us humble persons. An attitude of gratitude makes for a person pleasant to be around.
Thanksgiving causes us to look upward and outward from ourselves and bursts our bubbles of self-importance and self-sufficiency. It teaches us to be still and let in the love that provides for those too busy to even notice the giver even though we have accepted the gifts.
I still love Christmas with all its stresses and excesses. But Thanksgiving has the power to change our priorities and challenge our pride. It puts life in context that we may live in the presence of God with a sense of awe and among others with a sense of social responsibility. It nudges us from our self-centric orbits to behold the wonder of a universe of others and the majesty of God.