For some Christmas has become Xmas and Thanksgiving has become T-Day. Turkey Day.

Our foreign friends marvel that we Americans actually set aside a day to thank God for His blessings in our lives. Although for some it is little more than a day off, feasting, football or a family get together, it exists on our calendars for a purpose.

Thanksgiving was not always a day for turkey dinners. The Pilgrims of Plymouth gave the American nation a foundational precedent for days of prayer, fasting and thanksgiving. George Washington recommended a national day of prayer "to preserve us from the arrogance of prosperity, and from hazarding the advantages we enjoy by delusive pursuits." Thanksgiving became a legal holiday under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln in 1863. He said, "We have forgotten the hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these things were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated by our own success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us."

In the Book of Romans Chapter 1, the Apostle Paul describes the spiritual and moral declension that results when we stop giving thanks. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, NOR GAVE THANKS TO HIM, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, a and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator." The loss of an attitude of gratitude inevitably brings about idolatry, immorality and the disintegration of society. Paul describes the road from willful ignorance, to self-indulgence, to resolute impenitence.

Today our trouble is that we don't see what we have to be thankful for. Thanksgiving should go beyond appreciation for food, shelter, family and clothing. God has given us the precious gift of a relationship with Himself, a kinship with men and women made in His image and an eternal destiny of hope in which we fully participate with Him in a community of oneness. Our society remains ignorant of these things as long as it shuts the door on Biblical revelation.

Yesterday I deeply appreciated breaking bread with my brothers and sisters and remembering my Savior's death in a simple act of thanksgiving. The word 'Eucharist' comes from the Greek 'eukharistos' meaning grateful, thankful. The root word is 'kharis' meaning grace. Let us fully appreciate all that has been freely given to us in Christ. The Word of God is the menu for this thanksgiving meal.. In it God shows us all the great things He has done for us for which we can be thankful. Read it and then a look around with a renewed vision of gratitude.

How about you? Is T-Day more about Turkeys, Touchdowns, and material Things, or Thanking God from all that He has given us through His Son?

Sharing the Feast,