By Barbara Rainey
First posted on EverThineHome.com
Our youngest child was just a toddler. Our oldest was double digits but not yet a teen. We were spending Thanksgiving as we had the previous six years at a conference we hosted for singles in Colorado called the Keystone Kaper.
While the event was always amazing ministry and fun for our kids to learn to ski, it was not ideal family time. My husband was in charge—speaking, greeting attendees and other speakers—and generally pre-occupied by his job. While I understood and supported his work, my heart was longing for a way to begin to build memories and traditions for our family.
In our rented condo that year, I read a few stories to our children about the spiritual history of our country. After I finished I asked all six to write or color what they wanted to thank God for in their lives.
Our toddler told me what she was thankful for, I wrote her words, and she scribbled on the notebook paper. It was a short, simple little devotion time, and though I didn’t know it then it was the beginning of a 30-plus-year tradition for our family.
A new era of holiday decisions
Last year was the first in decades that we missed our favorite family tradition. Did you too? Thanksgiving celebrations for almost everyone were upended in 2020.
One year later we are still finding our footing on shifting sand. Like any trauma survivor who evaluates life with new eyes, many of us are re-evaluating why we do what we do. Most churches, for example, have not yet recovered their pre-2020 attendance—members are still reluctant to gather in large groups, families have become accustomed to watching online in pajamas, while others have decided church attendance just isn’t important in their lives anymore.
Family holiday gatherings are being questioned, too. Some family members remain anxious about crowds, but for others the break last year opened the door to new ideas or options.
Americans are fiercely independent. We are also addicted to comfort and to the pleasures of ease. So this year traveling “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house” has lost its nostalgic magnetism. It has lost its obligation. And for some this year, Thanksgiving just isn’t as important as it once was.
While new possibilities can be good, I’m concerned we might lose the invisible benefits of gathering, especially with family.
Our family has experienced these invisible benefits over the years. After we concluded our season of hosting singles conferences, we were free to travel on Thanksgiving to my mother’s farm where the rest of our family had started gathering several years before. Now, 30-plus years later, I see the importance of those yearly connections, specifically Dennis’s and my personal attachment to my nephews and nieces. And though our kids only saw their cousins once a year, those annual investments of time built lasting relationships. Bonfires, four-wheeler rides, jokes, and always chocolate chip cookies turned into teenage conversations in the kitchen with Uncle Dennis after Grandma and Grandpa went to bed.
In 2019 Dennis led the four newly married cousins in our rendition of the newlywed game. Nearly 40 of us crammed in the living room of the 100-year-old farm house laughed hilariously for two hours, including my mother who had just turned 94! None of us will ever forget it.
I would have never imagined then how attached I’d feel to these now 20- and 30-something nieces and nephews today with only a once-a-year opportunity to be together. I love them like my own kids.
Who thought up families anyway?
God created families. It was his idea in Genesis. And He imagined both biological, spiritual, and families formed by adoption as God made clear through Paul when he wrote, “In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5). We are related to our families of origin by blood and bonding. And we are related by the blood of Christ to brothers and sisters in the faith.
God is our Father. He bought us with the blood of His Son and it matters to Him that His children gather together in His name. This theme is woven throughout the Bible like a red ribbon through a garland of green. Gathering is not insignificant to God, for He tells us plainly, “For where two or three are gathering in My name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20).
Five reasons gathering with family matters at Thanksgiving
1. God established annual feasts and ceremonies. He instituted these occasions for His people to keep them connected to Himself and each other. He knew then and now that all humans are “prone to wander” so He built annual gatherings into the rhythm of life. And He declared them mandatory in Exodus 23:14: “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to Me.”
Our annual holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter), which are all rooted in deep spiritual significance, keep us connected to God and one another. Though our holidays are not instituted by God, Christmas and Easter have been commemorated annually since the third century after Christ, and Thanksgiving is about gratitude which is profoundly Biblical.
2. Repetition is healthy. We need the repetition of familiar routines even when life changes as it has these last two years. The daily, weekly, and annual habits of our lives become a liturgy of worship … what we give ourselves to declares what we value.
Humans need annual habits, holidays which pull us out of the ordinary … out of that which drains life to that which gives life. Gathering with family is never perfect, but it matters. And repetition begets traditions. Annual holidays, a contraction for the original holy days, become traditions.
3. Gathering together creates opportunities for bonding. Sharing fun, conversations, activities, and cooperating in cooking meals all create memories to be treasured. Memories feed our souls, renew and ground us. Traditions work like glue to keep nuclear and extended families connected. And yes, traditions include the foods we eat, the activities we share, the places we gather because they are part of those repeated habits which give life to our values.
God’s annual gatherings of His people included certain foods, locations and ceremonies and three of the seven required a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And attendance was mandatory. God knew if given the choice His children would find more fun things to do with their holiday time.
4. We will always need annual occasions to focus on God. Period. The Psalms remind us over and over that God’s people always tend to forget Him: “They forgot His works and the wonders that He had shown them … But they soon forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel … They forget God, their Savior” (Psalm 78:11; 106:13, 21). Thanksgiving gives us a regular opportunity to remember God and to vocally and collectively thank Him. It is good for our faith.
5. Being connected is necessary to our rootedness, our sense of unity and belonging. Without family, whether biological or adopted by Christ or by parents, we become isolated, alone, bereft of relevance in this world. Our church family and our family of origin provide what no one else can. Both are essential to our well-being. Many of the ills in our present-day world are a result of isolation, lostness, rootlessness, and the terror of having no answer to the question, “Does anyone care if I’m not here?”
Memories live long in families
Over the years at the farm we’ve had lots of laughs as we remembered times … like the year we arrived, late as usual, and after all eight of us spilled out of the packed SUV my dad announced, “I always thought it was the in-law kids who were late, now I see it’s my own kids who are always tardy!”
Or the year Dennis, ever the tease, sent our nephews, ages 8-11, out on a “snipe hunt.” If you don’t know how to hunt snipes, it’s an old technique for teasing boys and getting a good laugh when they come home empty-handed. All you need is a banana for bait and a paper sack.
We all remember my nieces as teenagers sitting at the kitchen table till midnight, ready to hit online Black Friday sales and then showing us their bargains the next morning. And we all remember my mom, Gramma, sitting up way past her bedtime in her chair in the kitchen, sleepy but with a case of FOMO before it became a thing. (FOMO means fear of missing out!).
Until her 90s she sat in her corner chair listening to the banter and the laughter, saying little but clearly loving watching everyone … together … enjoying the moments.
Nothing means more to a parent.
Nothing means more to God our Father than to see His kids gather.
I hope you will gather with some biological or spiritual family members this year. Change is inevitable and necessary. Traditions cannot remain the same forever. But some traditions must never change. Gathering to give thanks, to celebrate the birth of Christ, and to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ must remain.
If you enjoyed this, read some additional posts by Barbara on the same topic:
My Heart, Ever His: Prayers for Women (NEW from Barbara Rainey)
As we search for meaning in our world of shallow online relationships and glamorized selfies, many are returning to traditional and liturgical churches. The repeated words, benedictions, and historic hymns connect us to saints who have gone before, giving us a sense of belonging, richness, and transcendence. Written prayers, once cast off as archaic, are now welcomed as guides to tune our hearts to the heart of God.
In My Heart, Ever His Barbara Rainey shares 40 prayers for women. Readers can read and meditate on one prayer throughout the week or read a prayer a day for 40 days as a way to express the longing of our hearts to our Father who loves us even as he sees who we truly are. Like the psalms of David, these prayers are honest, sometimes raw. Barbara uses these transparent expressions of common female experiences to encourage us to surrender to Christ and help us see God as he is, not as we assume him to be. My Heart, Ever His provides a stepping-stone to help you become more transparent with God and discover his welcoming embrace.
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