Gratitude—both gratitude to the human persons around us and the ultimate gratitude toward the personal God—brings to us a sense of order and peace, a grounding in truth that sets us free. Gratitude, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, Balduin V. Schwarz, Joseph Ratzinger, and Romano Guardini (135 pages, Hildebrand Project, 2023) The great spiritual teachers tell [...]
For most of us, Thanksgiving gives rise to some of the best memories of childhood, perhaps because the day is not complicated by the dramatic rituals and more profound emotions of other holidays. I think of my mother's America now, and I know that we have not lost it entirely, even in the divisions of [...]
In the end, we want D.B. Cooper's true identity to remain a mystery. We want him to continue to "get away with it"—such a brave, courteous, refined outlaw from a simpler era deserves better than to be caught by us postmoderns. On the evening of November 24, 1971—the day before Thanksgiving—a dark-haired man dressed in [...]
The creation of Thanksgiving was no uncontested process but a fight emerging from antebellum crises over slavery and American nationalism. In November 1859, a Washington, DC alderman from Capitol Hill violently opposed the mayor’s request to declare a Thanksgiving public holiday. By this point, annual celebrations had become traditional and twenty-five governors already proclaimed the [...]
When your bird reaches the table this Thursday, you can ask your table mates if they know why the bird is called a turkey, and then—if you have read this essay—impress them with your encyclopedic knowledge. You remember the Dad joke at this time of year: “We’re having an international Thanksgiving. Mom’s serving Turkey on [...]
There is no feast of Thanksgiving in either the British national or church calendars, but it seems to me a good thing for any nation to set aside a day for the gratitude which is in truth the root of every other virtue. So on American Thanksgiving, I am re-posting here an Englishman’s act of [...]
The word for truth in Greek means the absence of forgetting—the sudden recollection, the vivid recovery. In the great tradition of the West, when those who study it retrieve immense and priceless knowledge from forgetfulness, we find the hope of renewal. As we approach Thanksgiving this year, the coronavirus phenomenon helps us value rightly what [...]
A lighthearted romp at first blush, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” yet tells the story of how the example of simple goodness can be transformational. The category of “Thanksgiving movies” is a select one indeed, but it is not meant as faint praise to crown John Hughes’ 1987 film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the greatest Thanksgiving [...]
I live in Russia. Yes, still. And I’m a natural-born American with no Russian heritage. I even have a pretty great life here. But every year in October—or on the first day of September, if I’m being honest—something’s missing. That is the Perfect American Pumpkin. Like Linus anticipating the Great Pumpkin, I sincerely hope for [...]
Gratitude remains the only key that unshackles us and lets us breathe free. We all unthinkingly use the phrase “the gift of life,” but it is only a gift if we really think of it as such. Myth is not fiction. Myth is truth that ignores the facts. Myths are the tales we tell each [...]
Keeping before us the countless ways God has blessed us, allows us to keep our focus on him, the God who infinitely loves us and who is with us through our greatest joys and our deepest sorrows. “Remember the marvels he has done” (Ps 105:5). Remember. Last year, when I was a novice, the novice master [...]
On Thanksgiving, I wish to cherish G.K. Chesterton’s magnanimity for our fellow, but often frustrating, man. He said, “We need a rally of the really human things; will which is morals, memory which is tradition, culture which is the mental thrift of our fathers.” What follows is a cornucopia of aphorisms and excerpts from a [...]
(Written to be read aloud, if so be, Thanksgiving Day) I remember here by the fire, In the flickering reds and saffrons, They came in a ramshackle tub, Pilgrims in tall hats, Pilgrims of iron jaws, Drifting by weeks on beaten seas, And the random chapters say They were glad and sang to God. [...]
In a season of disharmony, discord, distrust, and disorder, it is often painful to stop, to pause, and to give oneself distance enough to consider what must be recognized as good, and true, and beautiful, even in what seems a cesspool of existence. To give thanks, though, is not only necessary, it is salubrious! In [...]