thanksgiving

You know, today didn't seem like thanksgiving. Not really. I was at my sisters house, but we did nothing special. There was turkey, but it was sliced to go on sandwiches. There was no gravy, potatoes, stuffing, etc. And I'm sad. I wanted there to be something special about today. Something to make it stand out from the rest of the year. On twitter, everyone's been talking about the turkey, and the pies, and being stuffed. My brother and I drove back from my sisters and tried to find a fast food place to grab some dinner. Pathetic. You already heard my 100 things I'm thankful for. But on every Thanksgiving, my family has a tradition: before eating dinner, we go around the table and say 5 things we're gratful for. There is something that we read, and I'd like to quote it now: Five Grains of Corn

Some early New Englanders had an interesting Thanksgiving Day custom by which they kept their minds in contact with gratitiude. At their Thanksgiving dinners they placed five grains of corn by every plate as a voluntary reminder of those stern, harsh days of winter when the food suply of the Pilgrims had become so depleted that only five frains of corn were rationed at one time to any individual The early Pilgrims wanted their children to remember the sacrifice and hardship necessary to make pollible the settlement of a free people in a free land. They wanted to keep alive the memory of that long sixty-three day trip taken in the tiny Mayflower. They desired to keep in their hearts the picture of that "stern, rockbound, New England coast" and the inhospitable greeting it extended to its first post-Comumbus settlers. The Polgrims wanted to remember that first terrible winter which took such a tool of lives. They did not want their descendants to forget that on the day in which their ration was reduced to five grains of corn, only seven healthy colonists remained to nurse the sick. And nearly half their total number lay in a windswept graveyard on the hill. They also wanted to remember that when the Mayflower sailed back to Engalnd in the spring, only sailers were aboard. The display of five grains of corn at each Thanksgiving Day plate was a fitting reminder to keep their heroic past fresh in their memories. The corn served as an appropriate symbol to help the Pilrim forfathers keep their gratitude to God alive and vital. Supose that at this particular time we should borrow the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving Day symbol, what would five grains of corn at our plates signify to our minds?

- The Glory of the Sun, Stirling W. Sill I'd like to tell you the five things that I would have said, had my family done this today: 1. My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ 2. This great land, America, and the freedom that I have 3. Parents who love me 4. Friends who are there when I need them most 5. The Oppertunity to go to Universtiy I know Thanksgiving is nearly over, but what would your five things be?