Thanksgiving
by Bob Anes

October 12th is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. How many people stop and think of the multitude of things we have to be thankful for is another matter, for the majority of Canadians, it is just another long week-end.

When we were much younger, and living in The Netherlands, we had church services in the fall (during the week) to give prayers of thanks to the Lord for the harvest. I also remember that, as time went on, these services were less and less attended: to city folk, potatoes, vegetables, milk, and bread were items you bought at the supermarket. The connection with God providing the rain and the growth became less and less obvious, especially when, if there was a local crop failure, these things were simply imported from other countries. I don't know if the churches in The Netherlands still have these services. If they do, I doubt if the attendance is much higher than the turn-out for a Sunday evening service in Canada or the U.S.

How did

Thanksgiving begin?

I believe the origin of Thanksgiving goes back to the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1621. After a hazardous sea journey, during which some had perished, they settled close to where they landed and started to work the land and to build houses for themselves and their families. With hard work, and overcoming many difficulties, they made it, and in the fall, they set aside a day to thank God that He had spared them in a (at that time) hostile environment.

Compare that with our immigration. After a sea voyage of just over a week, during which we had three meals a day, and a reasonably comfortable place to sleep, we arrived in Canada. Did anybody die during the trip? If so, it was certainly an exception. Not the rule, as it was 350 years ago. Look at us today. Do we have any less to be thankful for? On the contrary, we have so much more. And yet, I am afraid that many Canadians not only do not realize it, but have come to believe they are entitled to what they have.

Who needs God, anyway?

Thirty years of government policy has convinced many that they no longer need God and that the government will look after them with a plethora of social programs—that the world owes them a living and that they will be looked after from the cradle to the grave. Even though it is becoming obvious that this utopian dream is not true, and that the country is deeply in debt to pay for all these goodies, Maude Barlow and her "Council of Canadians" are mailing us propaganda several times a year to keep the dream alive with petitions to the government to "save our pensions and social programs" and of course to send a generous donation to the Council. As far as I am concerned, it is just humanistic junk-mail, which goes straight into the garbage can!

In the days of the Pilgrims, many lost their spouses to disease or accidents, but we see anniversaries of marriages that have lasted for 40, 50, even 60 years or more. We live in comfortable homes and drive late model cars. Where children dying was just part of life in the days of the

Pilgrims, today that is the exception rather than the rule.

If we have to go to the doctor, for whatever reason, Medicare will cover the cost. If necessary, we can have expensive operations; we may have to wait awhile, but we don't have to worry about getting a bill in the mail afterward. Those of us who have reached retirement age receive Old Age Pension, and many collect Canada Pension on top of it. It is not seen as a blessing, but an entitlement. As long as we can manage to keep breathing, we will receive it!

It was not always that way, and there is no guarantee that it will last.

Did the Pilgrims have pensions? I doubt if the word pension was even known. Did they have Medicare? If there was a doctor (of which I am not at all sure), it was at a level that we would call extremely primitive today. And yet, they gave thanks to God for His blessings. If we are honest, many of the things we take for granted are blessings from God, and we owe Him many thanks, not just one day a year, but every day.

For some reason, my wife and I are acutely aware of that. Not that we are any better than anyone reading this. Maybe experiencing the war years makes us more aware that what we have are indeed blessings from God and that all of it can be taken away in an instant. At least three or four times a week we stop and say to each other: "What did we do to deserve the many blessings God gives us?"

You can travel back

in time and see it.

Let us go back to the days of the Pilgrims. A few years ago, we took a vacation trip to Eastern Massachusetts. We were aiming for Cape Cod, which has its charms but is also very commercialized, and ended up near Plymouth. We can highly recommend it. Among many other things, such as a whale watching trip, there is a replica of the Mayflower. On board are people who speak 17th century English. My wife had a coughing spell, and immediately a woman (dressed in garb of 350 years ago) came up to her and said, "Thou art in need of a drink" and offered her a cup filled with water.

Be sure to visit the "Plymouth Plantation." It is a replica village of the homes that the pilgrims built after arriving there. There are people who "live" there during the summer and act out the role of the Pilgrims. Be sure to talk to them, it will be a very interesting conversation! Of course, people try to trip them up and ask them 20^th century questions, which they can not answer, because they do not understand the words we use, and they are very skilled in getting around it! We can highly recommend this for a vacation trip. It will open your eyes to how blessed we are and to how much we have to be thankful for.