This holiday season marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. A year later, they modeled Thanksgiving and we celebrate Thanksgiving annually as a national holiday.
Yet, Thanksgiving 2020 will be different because 2020 has been a year like no other because of COVID-19. Schools are canceled. Local and state officials are telling people to cancel their Thanksgiving plans or severely restrict them. Even if people must scale back, does that mean giving thanks must be canceled as well?
No, we must find something in our lives for which to give thanks, though it isn’t easy during this COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the Pilgrims left us more than the habit of serving corn as a side dish. The Mayflower Pilgrims gave thanks despite losing half of their loved ones in one year. In this way, their story is particularly fitting this year where more than 247,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
