A Thanksgiving Never to Forget

 I share with you an account of one family which was able to find blessings in the midst of serious challenges. This is an account I read many years ago and have kept because of the message it conveys. It was written by Gordon Green and appeared in an American magazine over 50 years ago.

Gordon tells how he grew up on a farm in Canada, where he and his siblings had to hurry home from school while the other children played ball and went swimming. Their father, however, had the capacity to help them understand that their work amounted to something. This was especially true after harvesttime when the family celebrated Thanksgiving, for on that day their father gave them a great gift. He took an inventory of everything they had.

On Thanksgiving morning he would take them to the cellar with its barrels of apples, bins of beets, carrots packed in sand, and mountains of sacked potatoes as well as peas, corn, string beans, jellies, strawberries, and other preserves which filled their shelves. He had the children count everything carefully. Then they went out to the barn and figured how many tons of hay there were and how many bushels of grain in the granary. They counted the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese. Their father said he wanted to see how they stood, but they knew he really wanted them to realize on that feast day how richly God had blessed them and had smiled upon all their hours of work. Finally, when they sat down to the feast their mother had prepared, the blessings were something they felt.

Gordon indicated, however, that the Thanksgiving he remembered most thankfully was the year they seemed to have nothing for which to be grateful.

The year started off well: they had leftover hay, lots of seed, four litters of pigs, and their father had a little money set aside so that someday he could afford to buy a hay loader—a wonderful machine most farmers just dreamed of owning. It was also the year that electricity came to their town—although not to them because they couldn’t afford it.

One night when Gordon’s mother was doing her big wash, his father stepped in and took his turn over the washboard and asked his wife to rest and do her knitting. He said, “You spend more time doing the wash than sleeping. Do you think we should break down and get electricity?” Although elated at the prospect, she shed a tear or two as she thought of the hay loader that wouldn’t be bought.

So the electrical line went up their lane that year. Although it was nothing fancy, they acquired a washing machine that worked all day by itself and brilliant lightbulbs that dangled from each ceiling. There were no more lamps to fill with oil, no more wicks to cut, no more sooty chimneys to wash. The lamps went quietly off to the attic.

The coming of electricity to their farm was almost the last good thing that happened to them that year. Just as their crops were starting to come through the ground, the rains started. When the water finally receded, there wasn’t a plant left anywhere. They planted again, but more rains beat the crops into the earth. Their potatoes rotted in the mud. They sold a couple of cows and all the pigs and other livestock they had intended to keep, getting very low prices for them because everybody else had to do the same thing. All they harvested that year was a patch of turnips which had somehow weathered the storms.

Then it was Thanksgiving again. Their mother said, “Maybe we’d better forget it this year. We haven’t even got a goose left.”

On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.

The food was blessed, and everyone ate. When dinner was over, they all sat quietly. Wrote Gordon:

“In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again. …

“It [was] a lovely meal. The jack rabbit tasted like turkey and the turnips were the mildest we could recall. …

“… [Our] home … , for all its want, was so rich [to] us.”

My brothers and sisters, to express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven.

The Divine Gift of Gratitude, Thomas S. Monson, October 2010

You will never be happier than you are grateful.

Ever since that day, I have thanked Heavenly Father morning and night for my ability to breathe. We are surrounded by innumerable blessings that we can easily take for granted if we are not mindful. Conversely, when nothing is expected and everything is appreciated, life becomes magical.

President Nelson has said: “Each new morning is a gift from God. Even the air we breathe is a loving loan from Him. He preserves us from day to day and supports us from one moment to another. Therefore, our first noble deed of the morning should be a humble prayer of gratitude.”

That brings me to my fifth and final observation, which is you will never be happier than you are grateful.

Hallmarks of Happiness

October 2023

General Conference

Gary B. Sabin

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2023/10/31sabin?lang=eng&verse=#p

I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to pray.

 Another time—it was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, about 1943—I went to priesthood meeting. There was a large framed board. It had the pictures of all the young men serving in the military. Priests who had been at the sacrament table a few months earlier were now in the war. Each week it would be updated. Those who were killed in action had a gold star by their picture; those who had been wounded, a red star; and those missing in action, a white star. Every week, as a 12-year-old deacon, I checked to see who had been killed or wounded.

In quorum meeting that morning, the member of the bishopric said: “This Thursday is Thanksgiving. We ought to all have family prayer in our homes.” Then he said, “Let’s put on the blackboard the things we are grateful for.” We did, and he said, “Include these things in your Thanksgiving prayer.” I got sick to my stomach, as we never had a prayer or blessing.

That night at 6:30 we went to sacrament meeting. At the end of the meeting, the bishop stood up and was very tender. He told about the young men from our ward who had been killed and wounded. He talked about our liberty, our freedom, our flag, and this great country, and our blessings. Then he said, “I’d hope every single family would kneel and have family prayer on Thanksgiving Day and thank God for His blessings.”

My heart ached. I thought, How can we have family prayer? I wanted to be obedient. I hardly slept all Sunday night. I wanted to have a prayer for Thanksgiving. I even thought I would say it if someone asked me, but I was too shy to volunteer. I worried all day Monday, and all day Tuesday, and Wednesday at school.

Dad did not come home on Wednesday until early in the morning. Thursday we all got up. There were five boys and two sisters. We skipped breakfast so we would have a real appetite for Thanksgiving dinner. To work up an appetite, we went to a nearby field and dug a hole six feet deep and six feet wide. We made a trench to it as a hideout. I remember with every shovelful of dirt, I thought, Please, Heavenly Father, let us have a prayer.

Finally at 2:30, my mother called us to come and eat. We cleaned up and sat at the table. Somehow Mom had managed to have a turkey with all the trimmings. She put all the food on the table, including the turkey. I thought my heart would burst. Time was running out. I looked at my father, then my mother. I thought, Please, now, someone, anyone, please can’t we have a prayer. I was almost panicky; then all of a sudden everyone started to eat. I had worked hard all morning and afternoon to work up an appetite, but I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to pray more than anything else in this world, and it was too late.

Beloved youth, be grateful for parents who have prayer and read the scriptures. Prize family home evening. Be grateful for those who teach and train you.

Author: Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone
Title: One Link Still Holds
Where: Ensign, Nov 1999, 13