Today as I write this, there is a cold wind whipping up the
lake waters. The waves have turned all dark and ugly green, topped with their
foamy tentacles reaching out until they come crashing down relentlessly on
shore. There’s an ominous feeling of winter in the air today. All of those
chores, we lake people go through at the end of the season are done and
suddenly were not sure anymore what were going to do to occupy our minds. There
was a time this summer when there wasn’t enough minutes in a day to do
everything we wanted to do and we had to pick and choose. But wait-- there are
a couple of other events taking place this month and next and maybe its time to
concentrate on that before the year ends.
Thanksgiving is fast becoming the forgotten holiday. For
many of us, first and foremost it’s a four-day weekend, filled with eating,
football and family get togethers. I say forgotten because the
commercialization of Christmas’s is turning it that way. It seems a month is
not enough time to get all of the Holiday shopping done. Anyone who works in
the retail industry knows that Thanksgiving is becoming just anther workday for
him or her. If they’re lucky they get a couple of hours to enjoy Thanksgiving.
Black Friday is so appropriately named because of the shadow of Christmas
shopping---not to be confused with the real meaning of Christmas. This looms
over Thanksgiving like a dark cloud, striping the holiday weekend of so much of
its meaning. Maybe if we weren’t so preoccupied with Christmas we would have
time to reflect on what Thanksgiving is all about.
We all know why Thanksgiving was started but do we know why
its just not the same as it used to be when it was a trip to grandmas house. I
guess unless you’re a farmer the harvest doesn’t really mean as much as a trip
to the grocery store to buy the food for Thanksgiving. I guess unless you’re
poor or a lonely shut-in you don’t really miss a turkey dinner with all of the
trimmings. You eat like that or better many times a year. I guess unless you’re
a widower or a widow and remember when the chair next to you at that
Thanksgiving table held someone you were so thankful for and her dressing was
the best you ever tasted. It was the one-day she took the good china out and
how much you miss him or her. I guess when all of the kids and grandkids have
grown up and gone their ways and now have a family of their own that now is the
time when you realize, what it’s like, to be on the outside looking in.
But if your old enough, you may have something a lot of
people don’t have in your memory bank. You have an appreciation for what you
have been blessed with over all of these years. You remember Thanksgiving when
it was so much more meaningful. You remember people that aren’t here anymore.
People who meant so much to you and today, you not only give thanks for what’s
on the table and who’s around the table but you give thanks for those who went
before you and shared so many Thanksgivings with you, in a kinder gentler time.
To all of you, I hope you have a meaningful Thanksgiving. I
hope God blesses all of us with a day we won’t ever forget. But most of all, I
hope we realize what it is that makes this country so great and vow to never
let it be taken from us.---Mike Holst
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