Category: Christian Social Witness

You know the imagery — and it could include Christmas — WHO knows?

Then all the Whos

down in Who-ville

will all cry BOO-HOO!

Dr. Seuss

Scrooge, Santa & the Grinch in days of sadness

Before we address this current crisis and holiday (Thanksgiving), let’s glance at childhood images of joys embodied in Christmas.

Looking back chronologically:

The Grinch (1957 children’s book), then:

• the animated TV special (1966),
  • featuring, You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch, sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, ‘voice’ of Tony the Tiger
• the movie (2000)

Miracle on 34th Street movie (1947)

• beginning on Thanksgiving Day and
• featuring Santa Claus suggesting the best Christmas gifts &
• a love story matching mates for a little girl (Natalie Wood)
• (and let’s not forget appearances by Mr. Macy & Mr. Gimble)

A Christmas Carol (1843)

• Book by Charles Dickens
• Focused on a stingy Ebenezer Scrooge & destitute poor employee with an ill son and
  • a ghost of Christmas Past
  • a ghost of Christmas Present
  • a ghost of Christmas Future
• At issue is generosity and Christmas celebration with loved ones.
• Various stage plays, animations and movies have followed for nearly two centuries.

Christmas the Setting, Not the story

We could mention many more ‘Christmas’ traditions which include books, movies, art and most of all children’s stories.

I love them all. Liked them as a kid and still find much joy in most of them. For by now (especially in this year) many of us have become a Scrooge or a Grinch, desperately in need of a smile-cracking child-like moment of escape from every-day cruelties cinching our lives.

Christmas, however, is not our holiday here – at least, not yet. So today only, I will focus on the ‘traditional and uniquely ‘American’ holiday of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving – A Family Holiday for US

• OCTOBER – Christmas ‘stocking’ stores & ONLINE
• NOVEMBER – Daily ‘Black Friday’ Early ‘Deals’
• November 25, 2020 – ‘Christmas’ Marketing BLITZ
• November 26, 2020 – Thanksgiving (US)

• NOVEMBER 27, 2020 – BLACK FRIDAY
• November 28, 2020 – Small Business Saturday
• November 29, 2020 – 1st Sunday of Advent
• November 30, 2020 – CYBER-MONDAY!

Thanksgiving was always a big family celebration for the Harned’s. We celebrated with the traditional turkey at home on Thursday, then my grandparents welcomed extended family to an even larger feast on Friday.

(I guess we have some COVID concerns about such gatherings this year.)

Things don’t always work out the way we plan for pandemic famine or previous feast. Our on-line grocery order sent a turkey large enough for us to invite a couple dozen guests.

We ordered the ‘smallest‘ turkey for just three of us this year. Yet even as I write during preparation for a scaled-back Thanksgiving dinner, two of the three cooks definitely overstocked.

Our expectations all seem as misguided as the annual telling of indians (now properly, ‘native Americans’) serving turkey to those English Pilgrims in the funny hats.

Pilgrims & the Mayflower

You may relate to the illustrations of the Pilgrims and important historical documents of America such as the Mayflower Compact, but as important as these foundational documents and principles may be, many just don’t get it.

History taught to children in school in not a chronicle of fact, but rather an agenda of culture continued.

Roger Harned

In fact, most school children never get past the quaint pictures of grammar school, leaving American adults with a fairy-tale application of American history and fractured foundation of government.

Briefly, let’s examine what Thanksgiving was to one of many groups of Europeans from several nations who colonized the New World, the English separatist Pilgrims.

Allow me just one personal commentary:

In fact, observe China, Russian and various Arab nations colonizing natives of other lands and continents even in this 21st century. You may not agree with their overriding storyline of these international powers subjecting others to their culture either, but a true history of the millennia reveal many motives and much sin.

The Mayflower

A ship and its cargo (including passengers) sail with a contract – getting from point A to point B. It’s a business proposition.

In the case of the Mayflower and most ships settling the east coast of the ‘New World,’ its owner conducted the business of England (and its king). But as is the case today, not all agree with the current king on all matters of government.

Additional information source of much of the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower 

The Mayflower was chartered by a group of English merchants called the London Adventurers. Its paying passengers were Puritans, part of a group of more than 300 English separatists living in exile in Holland.

They encountered many difficulties which prevented them from sailing on 15 August 1620, from Plymouth England with another ship that leaked and was found not to be sea-worthy. The Mayflower departed finally on 16 September 1620, to establish a New Plymouth near the Hudson Valley just north of the struggling Jamestown colony of 1607.

We now know this to be the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season and as expected they encountered life-threatening rough seas.

The living quarters for these 102 Pilgrims on the gun deck of the Mayflower was cramped.

If you can picture the inside of a tractor-trailer [53′ x 13.5′], add about 50% in length & about 6′ in width — but LOWER the ceiling a full 8′ to just 5’6″! Toss it into a raging cold ocean and picture the worst days of their pilgrimage.

The Perilous 66 Day Voyage

Source: https://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-mayflower/

About halfway into the journey (late September?), the Mayflower ran into bad weather. A series of storms caused the ship to leak and the main mast to crack. The pilgrims worried the ship would not be strong enough to make it America. The crew managed to fix the beam and fill some of the leaks.

The passengers sighted shore on November 9. Although the pilgrims had intended to land in northern Virginia, when they reached the shore they realized they were in New England.

Bradford records, they resolved to sail southward to find someplace about Hudson’s river for their habitation.

The Mayflower Compact

source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mayflower-Compact

Because of the change of course, the passengers were no longer within the jurisdiction of the charter granted to them in England by the Virginia Company.

Within this legally uncertain situation, friction arose between the English Separatists (the Pilgrims) and the rest of the travelers, with some of the latter threatening to leave the group and settle on their own.

The Mayflower Compact bound its signers into a body politic for the purpose of forming a government and pledged them to abide by any laws and regulations that would later be established “for the general good of the colony.”

Once they agreed to settle and build a self-governing community, they came ashore.

Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.

William Bradford, second Governor of the Plymouth Colony

Here is the first Thanksgiving in this Promised Land for a new colony of Christians persecuted for their beliefs by other Christians.

Freedom of Religion

The American national holiday, Thanksgiving, originated from the first Thanksgiving feast held by the Pilgrims in 1621, a prayer event and dinner to mark the first harvest of the Mayflower settlers.

Wikipedia article

The emigrants weren’t just ordinary passengers but had distinguished themselves as being in religious conflict with the then accepted rites of worship in England and who were viewed as ‘dissenters’ and dangerous rebels. These English Puritans as they were to be known believed that their only means to practice their way of life and radical form of Protestantism was by creating their own Garden of Eden in the colonies.

Such an exodus from a Europe besieged by economic depression and the threat of war (the Thirty Year War) was essentially a journey into the unknown, a world of alien geography and strange indigenous peoples and little understanding of what would become of them.

- source: UK- THE MAYFLOWER AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICA

Many of the refugees sailing on the Mayflower were regarded as dangerous religious and political dissidents who, having been in conflict with the Church of England for their unorthodox religious beliefs, had to worship in secret (or flee to another European country).

• Mostly made up of evangelical Protestants who declared themselves as Separatists,
• other passengers also included Quakers, who equally found themselves in disaccord with the religious laws of England
  • forbidding any form of worship other than the established rites of the Church of England.

1620 – Fleeing Europe’s 30 Years War

source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War 
The Thirty Years' War was fought from 1618 until 1648

• German Princes (there were 225 princes) could choose the religion (whether they were Lutheran or Catholic) in their states
• People that lived in a state that had chosen Lutheranism or Catholicism were not allowed to change their religion

Calvinism became the theology of the majority in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany and was influential in France, Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. Calvinism was popular as well for some time in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but was rejected in favor of Lutheranism after the synod of Uppsala in 1593.

Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the Puritans and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York).

Wikipedia

Into this new ‘land of the free,’ Protestants of varying beliefs, Roman Catholics, Jews and others sought refuge from the politics of local wars that had plagued much of Europe and brought desperate men and women of faith to their knees in hope of a new promised land.

The Mayflower Statement of Faith and Government

I ask you in this divisive year of our Lord (Anno Domini) 2020, to note that the God of the founders of this great nation is part and parcel of their purpose of establishing this land – a land of promise in the New World, free from war by division of religion or political subjugation by kings or princes – princes of land or of aristocratic ownership of the freedoms of its peoples.

Although these religious pilgrims and sojourners departed from England, spoke English and certainly carried the printed King James Version of the Bible into their new promised land, our English founders feared and ‘dreaded‘ this same King James.

They refer to themselves as ‘loyal subjects,’ although many had fled to Holland. The Pilgrims represented a church, that is a community in Christ, exiled and persecuted for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Pilgrims have risked and nearly lost their very lives for their stated purpose, most thankfully put to pen before they set first foot on the rock of dry land.

It is a covenant of cooperation ‘into a civil body politic,’ .. ‘unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.’

Thanksgiving, A.D. 1621

It must have been a year of struggle in a New World far removed from Eden while somewhat short of a Promise Land.

Perhaps every year in America since has been, to a lesser extent, seen as a struggle short of that for survival. The plague of this present year threatens US no more than the troubling times of our founding fathers. (and mothers, to remain P.C.)

America seems to have glorified our past, forgetting to glorify Almighty God who has mercifully spared US.

We have not given thanks to God for mercy and grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, who even used a dreaded King James to translate the Holy Bible from Latin and Hebrew and Greek.

The Pilgrims of an uncivilized New England could have starved (as unseen homeless do in our US streets today).

They might have been killed by native princes, defending the sustenance of native animals and crops of their lands West of Eden, an untamed wilderness from where they fed the families of their own tribes.

Yet the Lord sustained the Puritan Pilgrims in a land where they could worship God freely – a new world with no fear of kings, princes and popes.

For this they gave thanks.

To the Name of God they gave glory. By the grace of God they gave thanks.

Verses of Thanks Giving

King James Version:

• Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name. – 2 Samuel 22:50
• I will give thee thanks in the great congregation: I will praise thee among much people. – Psalm 35:18
• And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves.. And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. – Luke 22:17,19
• Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. – 2 Corinthians 2:14

And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever,

The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 4:9-11 KJV

Thank God

America, bless God.

All you Nations, bless God.

By the grace of God, the glory of Christ Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, let US give THANKS to the LORD our GOD, that He might bless and keep US.

AMEN.