Turkey Time

Thanksgiving in South Africa. Of course South Africans are thankful, but-and this comes as a surprise to most Americans who've never thought about it before-they don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday in South Africa. And so it is with great excitement that our team was able to put together something that looked vaguely like a thanksgiving dinner to share with the South Africans on our team and to remind us of home.

One of the first things we realized we were thankful for is how easy Thanksgiving is in the US. Canned yams, crunchy fried deep fried onions in a can, cranberry sauce, ovens-Thanksgiving is like a take out dinner at home. Here we had to figure out how to make a casserole on the stovetop and learn how to get cranberry sauce to act like sauce instead of juice (it was actually based on cranberry jelly, the only hint of that particular fruit we could find). We toasted our garlic bread on the grill in back and sprinkled corn flakes on our green beans. It was amazing.

As we sat down to eat, the conversations around the tables (one of them invariably being nicknamed the "kids' table") were centered around holidays and what we ate during them. It struck me how much Thanksgiving is centered on food. It's not Thanksgiving unless there's a turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans and some sort of jello substance. In my family the entire holiday is almost exclusivley centered on the Yam Casserole-a creamy, buttery, crunchy, sweet bowl of yams and sugar and pecans that blurs the distinction between side dish and pie. We joke that we only serve the other dishes to moderate our intake of yams, for if we were to feast only on that casserole, we would all have heart attacks by the next morning.

So it seemed good when James climbed up on the brick barbeque and proclaimed to us the three things he was thankful for. One by one we followed, balancing on the metal grate and making each other laugh and cry with our gratitude. Thankful for the amazing provision we had seen through the rather difficult financial year, thankful for relationships that were budding or had bloomed, thankful for our familes and their health, thankful for a God to whom it is easy to thank.

Some would say that Thanksgiving is just another example of American gluttony. That the thankfulness is just a cover for our unrelentless search for more pleasure. That Americans love to eat so much, we've even invented a holiday to do nothing but.

I think this takes the wrong idea of what it means to be thankful though. You cannot be truly thankful until you have enjoyed the gift you are supposedly thankful for. I cannot thank you for the gift of a diamond ring and then refuse to wear it-even pawn it off. Thankfulness is the memory if the giver in the gift. It is the enjoyment of the present for the reciever and the enjoyment of the presenting for the giver. And so it is right to gorge ourselves on Yam Casserole once a year, just as it is right to gorge ourselves on the love of friends and family, the the thrill of making that backyard football touchdown and the sweet peace of a late afternoon nap.

God is good. Enjoy Him and his goodness. Then climb up on a barbeque and tell us all how good it was.