November 23, 2009
I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. It has all of the good elements of Christmas, without the hassles of Christmas.
On Thanksgiving you can be with your family, deliberately pause and give thanks to the Lord for your blessings, enjoy a “low pressure” meal (except for the cooks) with family and friends, and generally relax.
Christmas has all of the pressures of choosing the right gifts and the strain of attending many events throughout an almost three-week period so that you are physically and emotionally drained. Add onto this extensive travel for many and you reach the point of “too much.” There is too much food, too much concentrated togetherness, too many material things; just too much!
Thanksgiving is different. In many ways it is more about the concept of giving thanks and less about the things. I love Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is also a very American holiday. Other cultures have had harvest festivals, etc. but Thanksgiving is uniquely American. Its traditional beginning goes back to 1621 when the Plymouth colonists celebrated with Native Americans the bountiful food blessings that had been granted to them as a direct result of the help that the Native Americans had given the colonists. In fact, they had a three-day feast. Then Abraham Lincoln established a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863.
At the risk of being too personal, let me list some of the things for which I am most thankful.
I am thankful for:
- Being able to practice my faith exuberantly without fear in the most wonderful country on earth.
- The love of my family. The exquisite combination of support and confidence of my wife, the honor and respect of my sons and my daughters by marriage, the guidance of my parents and the joy of my grandchildren.
- The ability to prosper or fail in business, but most of all the freedom and opportunity to give it a try.
- The joy of great completed projects.
- Income to support my family.
- Great business partners on which I can depend.
- Dedicated employees that make my job exciting.
- Caring and skilled medical professionals that have enabled me to live with cancer since 2002.
- The way my dog, Duke, greets me as if I am the most important person on the planet. He is very smart by the way.
- The color of a clear autumn morning, the bracing coolness of a winter morning, the sweet smell of a spring morning and the warm blanket of a summer morning in Georgia. I love mornings.
- Baseball. This game is amazing on so many levels. You can never learn everything about the game and that fact adds an elusive brilliance to the game.
- A car that always starts.
- Friends.
- Exciting travel.
- The ability to communicate with so many valued associates through this Blog each week.
I wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving. Take a few moments to think of the things for
which you should be thankful.
That is it for this week. Post your comments on the Blog and let us stimulate the discussion.
Thanks,
Ted S. Miller