OPINION:
Among my growing list of improper uses of the English language is the response I get when telling a restaurant server or anyone else, “Thank you.”
The usual response, for as long as I can remember, has been “You’re welcome.” Among the young, especially, it has become “No problem.”
Why would thanking someone for a service or kindness performed be considered a problem? What does that even mean?
Thanksgiving, which unofficially began when the Pilgrims and early settlers thanked God for his “many blessings” despite their difficult circumstances, is now a small bump in the road on the way to the annual conspicuous consumption called Christmas. The airlines are thankful because of the heavy travel that leads to large profits.
Thanksgiving, as well as the approaching Christmas, have lost their unique status, at least among the secularist marketers, and have now been blended into “the holidays.”
That’s a problem.
There once was a time, and I still remember it, when most of the Christmas rush began after Thanksgiving. Now we have Black Friday ads starting before Halloween. Thanksgiving has taken a back seat to Christmas commercialism. It is now a one-day stuffing — not just of the turkey, but of ourselves — plus a couple of football games.
Although the early settlers and pilgrims were known for thanking God for his blessings, it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln became president that the day became an officially recognized occasion. In his proclamation declaring the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving, Lincoln said this about the blessings Americans had received: “To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”
That proclamation was issued after the Battle of Gettysburg, a bloody conflict in the Civil War, a war that was still not over. If a nation in the midst of such a great internal struggle could find things to be thankful for, what about us? In our rush to consume, do we any longer regard God as the source of our undeserved blessings?
Something even more profound came later in the proclamation. Speaking to his fellow citizens, Lincoln wrote: “I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.”
When was the last time you heard a national leader recommend penitence? The Scriptures are clear: Nothing gets God’s attention quite like repentance. It is then his mercy flows.
When he first ran for president in 2016, I asked Donald Trump whether he had ever felt the need to ask for forgiveness or to repent. He said, “No. Perhaps someday I will.”
God once said that for the sake of 10 righteous people, he would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Like the people in those ancient cities, we have many sins for which we should repent. I’m not exactly sure how God will respond as his people pray, seeking his forgiveness for our national sins, but I do know that it is an appropriate attitude as we gather, and a long-standing tradition to reintroduce around our table.
Perhaps a heaping serving of humble pie should also be on today’s Thanksgiving menu.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.