Staff members and volunteers organize food in the basement of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York’s community center in the South Bronx. (Gregory A. Shemitz / OSV News)
View from the pew
The origin of our traditional holiday of Thanksgiving was a combination of body and soul, feasting and religious observance. That is still true for thousands of celebrants who address their prayers of thanks to God in the many ways he is known by the many cultures that have made this country their home.
Even the newest immigrants learn the story of the first ones, the pilgrims, who in 1621 celebrated their survival and first harvest in the New World by sharing three days of feasting with the Wampanoag Indians in Massachusetts.
They weren’t just thanking God, but also the Indigenous people who helped them survive. Of course they prayed, those Puritan escapees from religious persecution in Europe. But as “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” history of the event tells it, the event was “a story of cooperation, trust and peace. Giving thanks was a longstanding and central tradition among both parties.”
We islanders are reminded by our Indigenous host people that thankfulness and recognition of sacredness is a universal concept that humans share.
The history on the almanac’s website is a pragmatic, not sentimental, account of the event: “The friendly harvest festival had much to do with political alliances, diplomacy and the pursuit of peace. If we pull back even further, this is also the story of foreign settlers coming to immigrate to territories widely inhabited by native peoples, a long history of bloody conflict, strife, death and wartime.”
Those chapters are history lessons saved for older folks, but for some, that’s the book that’s banned these days.
Thanksgiving in the U.S.
The truth is that for many people today, Thanksgiving is about reunions of family and friends, with an emphasis on a fabulous outlay of food — not just Big Bird — as well as time off from school or work, and more time to watch football games. At its worst, it can be a day of selfish smugness in a successful or prosperous life, the opposite the original intent.
In 1789, President George Washington declared Nov. 26 to be a day to recognize the creation of the United States’ new Constitution. On that first national Thanksgiving celebration, Washington called on people in the new country to acknowledge God for affording them “an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
In the following years, the second U.S. president, John Adams, and James Madison, No. 4 in the job, were calling for the Thanksgiving tradition be continued as a “national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer” and a “day of public thanksgiving for peace.”
But the third president, Thomas Jefferson, believed in the separation of church and state and that the federal government should not have the power to dictate public religious observance: “Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises … and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it.”
Thanksgiving was first established as a national holiday in the midst of the Civil War.
In his 1863 proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln thanked God and the U.S. Army for success in the battle of Gettysburg and set the last Thursday of November as an annual Thanksgiving holiday.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress made it official, the fourth Thursday of November. This year it is the latest it can possibly be — less than a month before Christmas — to the dismay of merchants eager for Black Friday.
The prayerful element of thanks was edited out and is subdued in these secular times. Nevertheless, the best reflection of the thankful, sharing, embracing-the-stranger still shines.
Volunteering tradition
One of the greatest established American traditions is to be a volunteer on Thanksgiving Day and all year long. People are welcome to join organizations’ effort to bring a meal to those in need of nourishment and the company of others.
Dozens of displays of that generous spirit will be playing out in the next week.
The news cameras always record the biggest Thanksgiving event on Oahu. Produced by The Salvation Army, the midday dinner at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center Exhibition Hall is expected to feed more than 1,500 people; it will be the classic American turkey-dressing-cranberry-pumpkin pie feast.
The logistics of that meal are awesome, as hosts and cooks for at-home family feasts can appreciate. What is truly awesome about it is that The Salvation Army gets more volunteers than it knows what to do with.
Hundreds of people want to join the ranks of volunteers preparing and serving the meal to individuals in need. The Salvation Army’s website offers the opportunity to sign up on a waiting list should more opportunities for volunteer workers open up.
There are many other opportunities for hungry folks to be fed by organizations without the public relations strength of The Salvation Army.
The Institute for Human Services has volunteers preparing and serving daily meals to homeless people at its Iwilei premises. Groups of people from clubs, churches, businesses and other organizations have committed to the task of feeding the hungry in the Thanksgiving spirit all year round.
Several congregations in the largest Protestant denomination, United Church of Christ, host meals on Thanksgiving. Waipahu United Church of Christ has provided a meal donated by Ko Olina Resorts. The full turkey feast will be served by four topside Molokai UCC parishes. And the list goes on.
Catholic Charities Hawaii will sponsor several events. Maryknoll School students contributed to food baskets distributed to Waianae affordable-housing residents; New Hope Christian Fellowship was a partner in presenting a Thanksgiving dinner for Mililani Mauka low-cost housing residents; and a pre-holiday banquet for 350 was served at the Lanakila Senior Center.
Churches become hubs for help
Catholic parishes don’t usually have the space and outbuildings that allow for hosting crowds. St. Augustine by the Sea does: Hot noontime meals are served in the parking lot Mondays through Fridays to 40 to 80 homeless and needy people. To the dismay of tourist industry neighbors, perhaps, but I love it.
If we were the billboard-in-your-face sort of denomination, it would be a great place to display the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
St. Augustine will follow its pattern of no meals on holidays. Instead, the nonprofit Revive and Refresh organization will bring its mobile hygienic center to the parking lot, offering toilets, showers and laundry facilities. Volunteers from the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine will provide basic health and medical assistance.
Another volunteer epicenter that I love is Wallyhouse in Kalihi-Palama. In the model of the Catholic Worker outreach originated in New York, it has batches of volunteers taking turns preparing meals Mondays through Fridays.
It was founded by island peace activists Wally and Kay Inglis and is located at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church on North King Street. Volunteers package nonperishable food provided by the Hawaii Foodbank and individual donors and hand it out five mornings a week. Hot meals are served during the week by an interfaith array of volunteers.
The Quakers, the River of Life evangelical organization and the Mystical Rose parish at Chaminade University of Honolulu are among those that take turns feeding the hungry at Wallyhouse. About 200 people are expected for the Thanksgiving dinner to be prepared and presented by a Tongan group within St. Elizabeth’s.
“It’s a lot of moving parts,” said Wally Inglis. He and Kay started the hot-meal service when the outreach center opened in 2017 and still cook twice a week.
“We want to get a group to take it on and organize” other meals, he said.
The Mystical Rose parish members took it on, but their first step was to just commit to make one meal for one month, said Kapono Ryan, a volunteer since that effort began in 2016. It was a year which Pope Francis had declared as a Jubilee of Mercy.
“Father Marty Solma is always talking about the Beatitudes. He focused on mercy so we were looking for a way to show mercy,” said Ryan, who retired as communications officer for Chaminade University.
She recalled how the volunteer group was exhausted after the food drive on campus, the preparation of the meal and the distribution to a crowd who lined up in the St. Elizabeth’s church parking lot. “Wally asked if we’d take it on one more time. We talked about it and decided we could.” So the third Tuesday of each month is Chaminade’s commitment.
“We are famous for our chili, rice and hot dogs,” Ryan said. “We get about 180 people each time.
Generosity overflows
“We are not just serving food to people, they are ohana. We consider each of them as family and that is important. They know we do it with joy.”
“We go out of the gate as a group and we pray with the people. We give thanks for the opportunity to serve. We thank God for sharing it with them. … The volunteers are exhausted and have a feeling of accomplishment. I can’t get over how our pantry shelves will be nearly empty. I’m surprised how we get more than enough food donated.”
The Mystical Rose group also serves food monthly at IHS.
“It becomes part of your character, the habit of serving,” said a veteran volunteer.
How did that make me feel? I’m one of those people who invests in Spam when it’s on sale and deposits it in our parish food pantry boxes. But we don’t distribute it; it goes to St. Pius X Church in Manoa, which hands out nonperishable food twice a week.
I write checks to charities, but I don’t join their action. My parish congregation got out of the volunteer habit more than two decades ago when a pastor shut down our food pantry, one of the largest in Honolulu.
I get tearful reading the passage in Matthew’s Gospel when, in a parable, Jesus was telling his disciples about what they must do to inherit the kingdom of God.
“For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. A stranger and you welcomed me. Naked and you clothed me. Ill and you cared for me. In prison and you visited me.”
The people, much like me, asked, when did that happen, what did I do?
The answer was, “Whatsoever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” And further, “What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”
How thankful I am for all the many people who made that message a pattern of life. We could all make them our role models.
