We
have so many rituals, expectations, and illusions surrounding the holidays,
don’t we? If we’re not talking turkey, we’re talking the Mayflower. Thanksgiving
is actually pretty awesome for this reason, this fascinating aspect of being human:
we love that repetition, that tradition,
the story. We are storytellers, and we incorporate props into our tales.
The props may vary. The construction paper turkeys made from the handprints of our
children, the stuffing prepared “just so,” the dining room table itself. (When
we violate the dictates of the narrative, the people freak: I’m thinking how my
mom still hasn’t gotten over the time I ordered my whole meal from a BBQ joint
instead of cooking it myself like a good wife and mother. I’m thinking about
how when I lived in Manhattan, I went out for Chinese on Broadway with a
friend—and the friend seriously asked our poor waiter, “Are there seconds?”) Our
stories, real or imagined, are important to us.
But,
really, it’s the psychology of story, the need for story: it’s how we make
sense of things. Stories speak to our need for meaning. This is my all-time favorite essay on the human need for
story, which ultimately harks back to our Thanksgiving celebrations. Read it. I
love it every time I look at it. (I seriously do. Required reading for all
writers.)
Thanksgiving
is a great time to gather, to give thanks, to load up on cranberry sauce and
sweet potatoes; these are good things. But we are really there for the story.
Note and note hard: story is
intrinsically, significantly, forever bonded with, history. History is story. A true story. We need to revel in, guard
it, think on it. When we gather around the table at Thanksgiving, aren’t we
ultimately saying, “This is our story”? We are celebrating our story.
This
episode of Urban Theologian radio centers on an important, more basic question:
What is a Christian view of history? Dr. Robert Tracy McKenzie, author of The
First Thanksgiving: The Real Story & What It Can Teach Us and History Department Chair at Wheaton
College, was the guest. His blog,
which focuses on Christianity and history, sounds great to me. Like something
to regularly read . . .
I would
encourage you to listen to the show and read more on the topic. In answer to
the above question, Dr. McKenzie notes a few principles: God has created us to
live as historical beings, we live in
historical contexts, God is the Lord of history, history is a
kind of revelation, we can draw lessons from the past, and we can see the present more clearly.
The episode
moves on to discuss the first Thanksgiving, which is clearly history and story.
Suddenly, it’s not all about turkey anymore—not when one is thinking about a
Christian perspective. I found some of the details very interesting. How had I
missed the part where the pilgrims spent twelve years in Holland before coming
to North America?
How, then,
should churches be more historically aware? We might understand that we are, by
definition, historians! (I would add storytellers.) There’s an “intentional
forgetting” of the past that seems to accompany the secularizations of
cultures—and the church should actively resist this. Claim history! This is a
great episode to get one thinking about our understanding of history, of
ritual, of myth. I’d use it as a way launch further study on history, on story,
on our need for meaning. While revisionist history is anathema to many of us,
our failure to grasp history might be just as bad. This must be part of
dominion, right?
Happy
Thanksgiving!
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