Thanksgiving and Moral Capacity

Regardless of what Thanksgiving has become or is to our nation, or in your personal or family traditions, the name of the holiday calls for and invites personal and collective reflection on the sources and influences in our lives for which we should be thankful.  We should be thankful for Thanksgiving at least for the name, and that it exists in our national calendar.  It happens, regardless of what we do with it.

This essay suggests that your personal orientation to thankfulness–as a general reflection, judgment, and attitude about life on a regular basis each day–affects your capacity to be a moral person in daily affairs. Before proceeding to this point, let us look at the historical origins of our holiday.

Sarah Hale and Abraham Lincoln

There are many events in American history lending support to this national tradition.  However, we owe to Sarah Josepha Hale, a woman who lobbied members of Congress in the 1860s, to Thanksgiving Day having been added to our national calendar.  President Abraham Lincoln’s 20 October 1864 Proclamation set apart the last Thursday in November, urging all citizens to use the day for personal and collective reflection, gratitude, repentance, and prayers for the nation, as will be seen below.

How interesting it is that our American calendar of holidays was altered by a woman with a cause she would not give up until won.  She lived in a time where men in general often ignored what women had to say on anything, let alone national affairs.  So she had her gender working against her.  Nevertheless, she believed Americans needed to reflect on themselves, their blessings, their uses of life and, that they needed to bow in humility and repentance before God for what they did to each other.  The Civil War was raging and devastating our nation.  The national conditions were so fraught with peril, she asked people to look within themselves, take stock, be humble, and seek God’s guidance for help.

She understood such moral reflection–personal humility in admitting how finite, fragile, and imperfect we are, how we often act as if we will live forever, or as if we may treat others any way we wish–was a national necessity.  She believed in God, though Lincoln’s God may have been more deistic than hers.  Nevertheless, between them both, their God was a moral being loving all humankind.  A national day of reflection on human selfishness, harm, and greed, they believed ought to lead to humility and repentance, and prayers for divine healing, unity, and blessing.

Whatever influence she had on his actual phrasing and content is a historical question.  However, the themes in Lincoln’s proclamation are completely in line with what we know about him.  Let us consider the effects of Hale’s labors, echoed in his words which still ought to have some meaning for us, since we share conditions familiar to our ancestors in 1864:  a time of national crises, war, and uncertainty.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

The theological framework for Thanksgiving is clear.  The purposes of the day were thankfulness to God; self-examination, humility, personal and collective repentance; and, prayers for a return to peace, union, and harmony in the land.  That the proclamation was issued when the Civil War was raging made Lincoln’s purposes all the more meaningful.

Thanksgiving As Moral Reflection

Since Lincoln’s initiative (a response to Hale’s initiative), many American Presidents have followed with Thanksgiving messages.  Some have done this from genuine commitment, others more from duty to observe what millions expect.  We know from our Presidents records of service some are more like Lincoln than others.

The same is true for us as citizens.  We still have some, like Hale, who keep the original theological framework, making the day a time for thanksgiving to God, self-reflection, and prayers for a return to national conditions such as were mentioned in 1864.  But we also have millions who look forward to the holiday less as a holy-day than a day of paid time off, self-indulgence, feasting and pleasure.  As in Lincoln’s time, so in ours:  public proclamations are official statements, to be applied or not as the public sees fit.

It seems to me that the original impetus that led to the Thanksgiving holiday is needed more than ever in America.  For a people so blessed with so much, it is clear that our single day dedicated, at least officially, to moral self-reflection and gratitude is impotent when compared to our national habits.  Our many national crises related to medical health, and personal and national debt, show too many live daily an unrestrained consumption that disregards future consequences and unhealthy conditions arising from them.  Underlying this is presumption:  that the present blessings and resources we have need not be preserved and cared for, as if the future will provide them as well.

Moral reflection on the costs to have what we have, be it physical health or economic resources, would demand a moral conclusion.  Life by nature is uncertain and, if one is blessed with bounty, one ought to value that which is possessed, which millions do not have but need.  This is a personal application of what thankful reflection ought to produce in ourselves.  Yet morality is not merely personal.  It necessarily is social, for the very nature of morality pertains to how we behave and treat others.  We then see this moral conclusion.  Our personal resources in health, skills, and capacities to use the life we have, if we are grateful for these, ought to be shared with others in our life journey.

Remember that Thanksgiving is a national holiday.  We all are called to common reflection and gratitude.  When we individually reflect on that for which we are individually thankful, our neighbors also are doing the same thing.  In other words, the nature of a national holiday precludes egoistic, private thankfulness.  Thanksgiving Day puts us as individuals into a moral, public context with other persons.  By observing it, we do not say, “I am thankful for what I have” but “I am grateful for what I have in the context of my nation and fellow citizens.”

As to the original purpose of Thanksgiving, that personal reflection should lead to personal humility and prayers to God, America is divided on this point now.  Religious citizens keep the theological framework for how they observe Thanksgiving.  Non-religous citizens use the day however they do.  Yet neither the religious nor non-religious observance means anything necessarily regarding how these citizens actually live out their moral lives the other 364 days of the year.  Some religious people are very thankful to God, indeed, for what they have, then live only to get more and mistreat others in the process of accumulation.  Some non-religious people are very thankful for what they have, then live to share their resources, not “for God’s sake” or pleasure, but because they love other people as members of the same species.

Thanksgiving and Moral Capacity

You simply cannot be a fully moral person and not be morally reflective; morally honest with yourself; morally circumspect about your capacities; and morally sensitive to your own delicate place in the world, among other persons.  Unless you have engaged in the moral act of reflection on all you have, the series of choices and uses of your life through which you have what you do, and then place yourself within the context of humanity at large, you cannot have a factual, balanced, and healthy sense of moral obligation towards others.

Notice that on Thanksgiving Day even the poorest people, those with the least financial security or physical possessions, do fully engage in this moral process, and emerge thankful for what they have.  Why?  Is it that they are so blind and deluded that they fail to see they are not listed in Forbes lists of the wealthy and “successful” our culture observes?  Of course not.  They can engage fully in the moral call of Thanksgiving Day and emerge deeply thankful, whether they are religious or not.  This is possible because of the inherently realistic nature of the call for national reflection and gratitude.

The poorest person, even one in a hospital critical care unit or a nursing home can, as an old hymn says, “count the many blessings.”  To have no money for a fine turkey does not stop gratitude for a pot of pinto beans, which millions would love to eat.  To be bed-ridden, sick, and weak, does not stop gratitude for the bed, or for those who give the care.  Even the criminal incarcerated for life for murder is not stopped from gratitude he was caught, sees his gross crime, and can counsel family and friends, and other inmates, to make better choices and treasure freedom to do good, not harm.

The call for reflection on one’s life, to take time to detail what has gone right, to assess one’s role, and the roles of others, on that life; the call to make a moral conclusion that humility is in order; the call to be grateful and thankful, affects one’s moral capacities after that reflection has been done.  The American who engages fully this moral process, not for a single day but a daily approach to life itself, must become a better, stronger, more effective moral member of society and the world.

Life is fragile and delicate.  The very wealthy person who is circumspect and wise understands that what today is seen and enjoyed as great bounty can be obliterated in a moment through illness or life events.  The moral wealthy person understands what the poor person does, that as human beings we are all in this life together, that we need each other, that we must help each other, for we all share the same experiences to come.  We all will have our own time of weakness, need, and the removal of conditions we may now take for granted, if we do not reflect on them.

Become Thankful, Become More Moral

America faces crises today dissimilar yet similar to 1864. We have no Blue and Gray armies devastating our citizen population and land, fighting to preserve the Constitution and end slavery, or to set up a confederacy preserving the power of a few to devastate millions in chains. Yet we do have Red and Blue states, each with divided people suspicious of one another, led by political parties using falsehood, propaganda, and accusation to maintain their power.  Though those political parties have different names, within all are persons with the same values and mentality.  These are in a common confederacy that would enchain the very spirit of Thanksgiving Day.

Unless the leaders and people of the United States reclaim and reinvigorate the moral examination of what we have, why and how we have it, and our need for humility and care for our fellow citizens, and the citizens of the world, there can be no moral conclusions to our current national crises, nor any moral approaches to them.  Yet, unlike most of our leaders and political parties, you and I reader must not look outward and blame others.

You and I must become persons who engage in the moral process to which we are called on Thanksgiving Day.  When we do that in its original spirit, that process will not be only for one day.  Every day day becomes a time of interior reflection, assessment, humility, gratitude, and re-commitment to  be moral persons including others in our life decisions.  Begin with yourself first.

If you are unfamiliar with or threatened by such interior self-examination, take baby steps.  Start the day by being thankful for it.  You could be dead, or limited to inaction in a thousand ways.  Make better uses of your time and resources.  Include the effects of your decisions on others.  Intend your decisions and actions help not harm.  See yourself for what you are, or are becoming:  a moral member living morally within the human community.  All day long you feel emotionally better about yourself.  At the end of the day, with this thanksgiving-moral-calculus having been in operation, your life will have been invested for moral purposes.  Just by being yourself, a single person, you will have woven into the fabric of your relationships moral influence.  Others will be thankful for you having been in their lives.

Then, when you and I do this, whether apart in our discreet lives and spheres of influence, or in concert by intentionally seeking out and joining others, we have invested in the United States as a moral community.  Sarah Hale and Abraham Lincoln had to stand against apathy or opposition to pass on to us Thanksgiving Day.  Let you and I follow in their stead to preserve and protect our Constitution and democracy.  We have enough crises due to lack of moral reflection, gratitude, and humility.  Let us be thankful today we are alive to make a difference to the contrary, starting with ourselves.