It’s Thanksgiving week, and our preacher up at the First Baptist Church of Magee told us Sunday that we have much to be thankful for. I agree.
I know that there’s a lot wrong with America now. Things that we never expected to see in this country have happened. Our borders are spilling over with illegal immigrants bringing in everything from COVID to deadly drugs. And the Biden administration is giving them money to live here. Whole cities are defunding the police they hired to keep them safe because of a few bad apples. Wait ‘til they see how many bad apples show up when there are no police officers to stop them! And if you ordered something for Christmas this year, I hope you did it in July. Otherwise, it may still be sitting on a container ship in the Los Angeles harbor. Biden can’t figure out how the supply system works either.
If our thankfulness depends on living in a country that’s working right, we’re won’t be able to generate much thanks.
And if thankfulness depends on what’s in our pockets, we’re certainly in a mess. A fastfood meal of two sandwiches and two drinks that cost $9 last year costs $16 this year. I can’t imagine what it would cost to take five or six kids for Happy Meals or pizza! Inflation, which is having more money in circulation than there are goods and services to purchase with it, has eaten a hole in everyone’s wallet in 2021. Everything costs more, from that pizza to a used car--if you can find anybody working at the pizza place or a used car to buy. It doesn’t matter if you got the $15 an hour you demanded for taking orders at Bubba’s Burgers, it won’t buy any more than your $8 an hour bought in 2019.
We certainly won’t be giving thanks in 2021 for the things we might have been thankful for a few years ago.
Most of us can’t be thankful that we’re taking the whole family to Disneyworld for Christmas. We can’t afford Mickey Mouse this year.
And that new Lexus in the TV ads with a big red bow on it, sitting out in the snow just waiting to surprise the little wife on Christmas morning? She’s not getting it this year. Not only can her hubby not afford it, but he probably couldn’t find a new car to buy. It seems that the Japanese plant that makes the computer chips to operate the electronics in our cars burned down, and they haven’t built a new one yet. If the plant had been in America, we might not have this problem. Oh, wait, US employees are being paid not to work, so I guess we would still have a problem.
Well, what we were thankful for in the past may be gone this year, but we still have plenty to be thankful for. It’s all in the way you look at it.
We’re not taking the family to Disneyworld, but I’ll be thankful just to be with my husband for a Thanksgiving meal Thursday. Oh, and I’ll be thankful for a restaurant that cooks such a meal! Even if my green bean casserole is still sitting in a container ship in LA, I’ll enjoy what I am served and be extra thankful to leave without washing dishes or putting up leftovers.
As for food cost, turkeys are grown in America and are one of the least expensive meats, unless you count Spam. And if worse comes to worst, I still have my old newlywed recipe for Holiday
Spam. You stick cloves in the Spam and pretend you’re cooking a really small ham, and you don’t get stuck with so many leftovers. My husband and I ate a lot of Spam for the first few years of our marriage, and we can do it again.
This economy won’t keep me from Christmas shopping either. I’m not ordering from the internet this year, fearful of not getting the gifts in time. So my grandchildren are getting cash and one or two other gifts from whatever I can find in local stores. Surely there’s a bargain out there somewhere. And maybe they won’t notice that the cash doesn’t go as far as they’d hoped.
I’m thankful that a COVID vaccine came along this year. And I’m thankful not to have a mask stuck to my face.
When I think about it, I can be thankful for a lot of blessings this Thanksgiving despite the world condition.
The Pilgrims didn’t celebrate that first Thanksgiving because they had sensible government or they had the bucks to take the family to Pilgrim Land. They celebrated because they had survived their first terrible year in America.
They had a little corn to eat and some pumpkins (which, I suppose, is why we’re still cursed with pumpkin pie). Thanks to some forebearing Native Americans who had been kind enough not to collect their scalps, the Pilgrims still had their hair to wear to dinner.
So they all sat down at the table, thanked God, and passed the corn.
Maybe that’s what we should do this Thanksgiving too. We’ve survived another tough year. Let’s stop whining about what we don’t have and thank God for what we do have. And pass the Spam.
