A Thanksgiving story for your children….
SUNDAY MORNING STORIES — Fr. Gerald T. Brennan
The Boy Who Almost Lost Thanksgiving Day
Jimmy Mahr liked cranberries, and he liked turkey, too. Cranberries and turkey were on the top of Jimmy’s list of good things to eat.
It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and seven-year-old Jimmy was wondering. The little fellow was wondering about the great day that was coming soon. He wondered whether he would have cranberries and turkey for his Thanksgiving dinner.
“Are we going to have cranberries and turkey for Thanksgiving?” Jimmy finally asked his father.
The father waited for a moment and then shook his head. “Jimmy,” said the father, “we’re not going to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.”
Little Jimmy was puzzled. “Does that mean that we’re not going to have cranberries and turkey?” he asked.
“That’s right!” answered the father. “No cranberries and no turkey!”
Jimmy couldn’t understand. “Why aren’t we going to have cranberries and turkey?” he asked and there were tears in his eyes.
The boy’s father looked very serious. “Jimmy,” he said, “Thanksgiving is a day for people who want to thank Jesus for all the good things they have received from Him. Jesus, you know, has been very good to you, but I’ve never once heard you thank Jesus. When you say your prayers at night, you are always asking for something. You ought to do something about that!”
When the father left the room, little Jimmy sat down on the floor and began to think. He thought about what his father had said. Yes, his father was right. He had never thanked Jesus for anything. Well, the little fellow thought and thought, and he wondered what he could do to show Jesus that he was thankful.
All of a sudden, Jimmy got an idea. “I know what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “I’ll give Jesus something. I’ll give Jesus the best thing I own.”
Jimmy ran upstairs to his playroom and looked at his toys. He looked at his drum, his electric train, his skates, his football, and his marbles. No, those things weren’t good enough for Jesus, but Jimmy saw two things on the floor that he thought Jesus would like. He picked up both of them and set them aside. Then the boy wrote something on a piece of paper.
Pretty soon, little Jimmy Mahr tiptoed down the stairs with a bundle under his arm. The boy opened the door very quietly and hurried down the street. Where did Jimmy go? He hurried to the nearby church. There were no people in the church at the time, and that’s just what Jimmy wanted. The boy tiptoed down the long aisle of the church right up to the altar steps. There on the top step of the altar Jimmy Mahr left his little bundle. Then Jimmy left the church.
When Father McCarthy came into the church the next morning, he was more than surprised to find a bundle laying on the top step of the altar. At first, the priest was afraid to open the bundle. He felt the bundle very carefully, shook it, and wondered. Then the priest opened the package and what do you think he found inside? A pair of cowboy boots! And that isn’t all! In one of the boots the priest found a letter. Father McCarthy smiled when he read the letter, and you’ll smile, too. Here’s what the letter said:
“Dear Jesus:
Thank You for everything You have given me! Now I want to give You something nice. Here are my cowboy boots! I hope they’ll fit You.
Jimmy Mahr.”
Well, after Mass, even before he had his breakfast, Father McCarthy called Jimmy Mahr’s father on the telephone, and when Mr. Mahr heard what his boy had done, he smiled. Mr. Mahr was pleased that his boy had learned a lesson. Jimmy Mahr had learned to say “thanks.”
Now I suppose you are wondering about Jimmy Mahr’s Thanksgiving dinner. Well, the Mahr family had a grand feast on that day with plenty of good things to eat. But do you know what Jimmy Mahr ate most for dinner? Cranberries and turkey! Cranberries and turkey!
Boys and girls, there are too many children like Jimmy Mahr. Yes, there are too many boys and girls who are always asking Jesus for something and they never thank Him. Some boys and girls never thank Jesus for being good to them and I hope you’re not one of them. When you pray, ask Jesus for the things you need, but don’t forget to say prayers of thanks, too! Prayers of thanks are mighty important because they tell Jesus that you are grateful.
No one likes a person who is not grateful and Jesus doesn’t like a person who never says “thanks.” If you don’t thank Jesus for His gifts, maybe Jesus won’t be so generous with you. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?
I don’t think boys and girls mean to be ungrateful, but they certainly act that way. They forget to thank Jesus. Don’t you forget to thank Him! Now, if you want to show Jesus that you are grateful, you won’t have to give Him your cowboy boots. Jesus doesn’t want your cowboy boots. He doesn’t need your cowboy boots. How can you show Jesus that you are grateful? Just by saying prayers of thanks!
God bless you and take good care of yourself!
Coloring Page for your Children…
Gratitude is the gift we give to God each day. In this article, Father Weiser gives to us the history of this national holiday…
by Father Francis Weiser, The Holyday Book
HARVEST FESTIVALS PRE-CHRISTIAN FEATURES
One special, and yearly, thanksgiving celebration going back to ancient times took place at the successful conclusion of the harvest. That is why we find harvest festivals with thanksgiving rites everywhere as far back as we can go in our knowledge of religions and cultures.
Among the Indo-European races it was the great “Mother of Grains” to whom these rites were addressed. Within the various ancient nations this common mythological Mother of Fields was represented as a national god or goddess of vegetation (Astarte, Osiris, Tam-muz, Demeter, Ceres ). Great festivals were held every year in their honor in thanksgiving for the harvest.
The most famous of all these feasts were the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece, held every September as a tribute to the grain goddess Demeter.
Among the Slavic, Germanic, and Celtic races the ancient belief in the great Mother of Grains has persisted to our day in the form of many superstitious practices connected with fall harvesting, especially with the “last sheaf” in every field.
Sometimes the sheaf is personified, molded into the form of a straw doll and, as “harvest baby,” carried in joyful procession from the field to the village.
In Austria it is shaped into a wreath and placed on the head of a girl who then is designated at the harvest festival as “queen” or “bride” (Erntebraut).
Similar customs were universally practiced in England, where the last load brought home with great rejoicing bore the name “horkey cart,” and in Scotland, where the last sheaf is called “kirn [grain] doll.”
In northern France harvesters, seated on top of the last load brought home from the fields, chant an ancient traditional tune to the text Kyre-o-dle. This is an interesting relic of folklore from Carolingian times, when shepherds and field workers cheered their solitary toil by singing the Kyrie eleison as they had heard the monks sing it at High Mass.
In southern France the last sheaf was tied in the form of a cross, decorated with ribbons and flowers, and after the harvest celebration was placed in the best room of the house to be kept as a token of blessing and good fortune.
JEWISH CELEBRATIONS
Moses instituted among the Jews two great religious feasts of thanksgiving for the harvest: the Feast of the Spring Harvest (Hag Shavu’oth, Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost; Leviticus 23, 15-21) and the Feast of the Fall Harvest (Sukkoth, Feast of Tabernacles; Leviticus 29-43): Thou shalt celebrate the festival of weeks to the Lord thy God, a voluntary oblation of thy hand which thou shalt offer according to the blessing of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt feast before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates. and the stranger and the fatherless, and the widow, who abide with you in the place . . . (Deuteronomy 16, 9-11).
Thou also shalt celebrate the solemnity of tabernacles seven days. when thou hast gathered in thy fruit of the barnfloor and of the winepress. And thou shalt make merry in thy festival time, thou, thy son, and thy daughter, thy manservant, and thy maidservant, the Levite also and the stranger, and the fatherless and the widow that are within thy gates (Deuteronomy 16, 13-15).
CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
In the Christian era the custom of celebrating a thanksgiving harvest festival began in the High Middle Ages. For lack of any definite liturgical day or ceremony prescribed by the Church, various practices came to be observed locally.
In many places, as in Hungary, the Feast of the Assumption included great thanksgiving solemnities for the grain harvest. Delegates from all parts of the country came for the solemn procession to Budapest, carrying the best samples of their produce.
A similar ceremony was observed in Poland, where harvest wreaths brought to Warsaw from all sections were bestowed on the president in a colorful pageant. These wreaths (wieniec), made up of the straw of the last sheaf (broda), were beautifully decorated with flowers, apples, nuts, and ribbons, and blessed in churches by the priests.
The most common, and almost universal, harvest and thanksgiving celebration in medieval times was held on the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours ( Martinmas) on November 11. It was a holiday in Germany, France, Holland, England, and in central Europe.
People first went to Mass and observed the rest of the day with games, dances, parades, and a festive dinner, the main feature of the meal being the traditional roast goose (Martin’s goose).
With the goose dinner they drank “Saint Martin’s wine,” which was the first lot of wine made from the grapes of the recent harvest.” Martinmas was the festival commemorating filled barns and stocked larders, the actual Thanksgiving Day of the Middle Ages. Even today it is still kept in rural sections of Europe, and dinner on Martin’s Day would be unthinkable without the golden-brown, luscious Martin’s goose.”
THANKSGIVING DAY IN AMERICA PILGRIMS’ CELEBRATION
The tradition of eating goose as part of the Martin’s Day celebration was kept in Holland even after the Reformation. It was there that the Pilgrims who sailed to the New World in 1620 became familiar with this ancient harvest festival.
When, after one year in America, they decided to celebrate a three days’ thanksgiving in the autumn of 1621, they went in search of geese for their feast. We know that they also had deer (a present from the Indians), lobsters, oysters, and fish.
But Edward Winslow, in his account of the feast, only mentions that “Governor Bradford sent four men on fowling that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.”
They actually did find some wild geese, but a number of wild turkeys and ducks as well.
The Pilgrim Fathers, therefore, in serving wild turkeys with the geese, inaugurated one of the most cherished American traditions: the turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day.
They also drank, according to the ancient European tradition, the first wine of their wild-grape harvest. Pumpkin pie and cranberries were not part of the first Thanksgiving dinner in America, but were introduced many years afterward.
The second Thanksgiving Day in the New World was held by the Pilgrims two years later, on July 30, 1623. It was formally proclaimed by the governor as a day of prayer to thank God for their deliverance from drought and starvation, and for the safe arrival from Holland of the ship Anne.
NATIONAL CELEBRATION
In 1665 Connecticut proclaimed a solemn day of thanksgiving to be kept annually on the last Wednesday in October. Other New England colonies held occasional and local Thanksgivings at various times.
In 1789 the federal Congress authorized and requested President George Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for the whole nation. Washington did this in a message setting aside November 26, 1789 as National Thanksgiving Day.
After 1789 the celebration reverted to local and regional observance for almost a hundred years. There grew, however, a strong desire among the majority of the people for a national Thanksgiving Day that would unite all Americans in a festival of gratitude and public acknowledgment for all the blessings God had conferred upon the nation.
It was not until October 3, 1863, that this was accomplished, when President Abraham Lincoln issued, in the midst of the Civil War, a Thanksgiving Proclamation. In it the last Thursday of November was set apart for that purpose and made a national holiday.
Since then, every president has followed Lincoln’s example, and annually proclaims as a “Day of Thanksgiving” the fourth Thursday in November. Only President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date, in 1939, from the fourth to the third Thursday of November (to extend the time of Christmas sales). This caused so much consternation and protest that in 1941 the traditional date was restored.
Be attentive to the sacrifices your husband makes for the family. Each day he battles the world, the flesh and the devil out in the workforce for you. Don’t let that go unnoticed. Thank him often! Appreciate him. -Finer Femininity
Nothing like a hot cup of tea on a brisk November day!
A Chai Tea recipe we have used from Taste of Home…
Ingredients
- 2 cups water
- 2 tea bags
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 6 cardamom pods, crushed
- 1 whole clove
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Directions
- In a small saucepan, combine the first six ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Stir in milk. Return to a boil; boil for 1 minute, then strain. Stir in sugar until dissolved. Pour into mugs. Top each with whipped cream, cinnamon and a cinnamon stick if desired.
OR…
Just buy some lovely Chai Tea Bags and top with homemade whipping cream and cinnamon!
A beautiful Advent CD sung by a beautiful Benedictine Order of Nuns…Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles.
Available here.
💖💙
How to Raise Good Catholic Children ~ Available here.
Let Mrs. Newland show you how to introduce even your littlest ones to God and develop in your growing children virtues such as:
The habit of regular prayer
Genuine love of the Rosary
A sense of the dignity of work
Devotion to Mary and the saints
A proper love for the things of this world and for the things of Heaven
Attentiveness at Mass
Love for the Eucharist
An understanding and love of purity
The ability to make good confessions
And dozens of other skills, habits, and virtues that every good Catholic child needs
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Such a sweet story, and so appropriate!
Thank you very much!
Have a blest Thanksgiving feast tomorrow! 🦃🍁😇
And you too, Mary Ann! 🧡🦃
Tried the tea, homemade version and it is delicious! Thank you 😊.
So glad you liked it!🫖☕️