Thanksgiving

So, today is Thanksgiving in Canada and we all have a day off tomorrow. I can't entirely get a consensus on what Thanksgiving is for, but several people have told me it's good old Harvest Thanksgiving.

Now I can see the Ancient Celts giving thanks to their supernatural beings for the success of the Harvest, since their continued existence was pretty much dependent on it, and I think it is right to give thanks to our own Gods and Goddesses, especially the latter who are generally in charge of fertility and whatnot, but I feel that there is an edge of smugness these days.

The ancient peoples of any land were not so aware of everyone else on the planet, and their own actions were pretty much not affecting anyone else on the planet. Unless you subscribe to the old butterfly flapping its wing theory, which I'm not dissing, no, no, it has a place.

But we live at the expense of others, no doubt about it. We buy in all kinds of produce that we don't grow ourselves. Of course we pay for it, and others benefit from our money, kind of, but we also have surplus while others starve. And our general use of fossil fuels to move the things we want about the planet is profligate. It is changing the environment so that ploughing and scattering becomes ever harsher for others.

'We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand...'

Stirring stuff and bellowed out in gratitude across the white Christian world. So is our God really so partisan and why? Why isn't his/her almighty hand feeding and watering the good seed in other lands?

Like Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, we are not worthy. We think we are, but what makes us better? Sheer darn luck. We give thanks for having food because we feel guilty, it's an accident of birth that gives us food on our tables, not some work ethic. Our farmers work bloody hard to keep us fed, but so do people in other lands with less success.

We are lucky, and it is meet and right to give thanks for what we have, but not ever to be smug about it.
For the ancients it was an easier equation. A good harvest meant that God was on your side, and this was important. If God wasn't, then we had done something to offend, and a simple human sacrifice, or some other atrocity that no god would ever call for, would set things right.

Us, we hope that God is turning a blind eye while we screw up creation.