By Victor Minetola
My dad’s side of the family is pretty big. His uncle worked in management at Macomb Mall, and we would have our Thanksgiving dinners in a huge conference room hidden away in the back.
We would wait and wait for some of the uncles and cousins to return from the Lions game. By the time we would begin eating, the turkey would have cooled to an unpleasant lukewarm of Revelation proportions (i.e. you would spit it out of your mouth). After dessert, my dad’s uncle would turn on the Christmas display inside of the mall, and we would go get a private tour of Santa’s workshop before Santa even got there.
One year–I must have been about 6 or so–my older sister, Lisa, had done a Thanksgiving program at school. She had a Pilgrim outfit that my mom had made and (appropriately so) decided she would wear it to Thanksgiving dinner at the mall.
Since she got to wear a cool outfit, I decided (inappropriately so) to dress up as a cowboy. Follow the logic with me—Pilgrim : Indian : Cowboy. Made perfect sense to my 6-year-old self.
So there I was, running around with cousins, second cousins, and some kid that I might have been related to but wasn’t sure how, getting blisters on my feet from the cowboy boots I had gotten the previous Christmas.
When we finally sat down to eat and we said grace, all that mattered was that I was with my family and we were thankful for all of the gifts God has given us: food, shelter, the freedom to dress up as a cowboy and, above all, His own Son. To win salvation for us and to bring us into His kingdom work.
When we finally sat down to eat and we said grace, all that mattered was that I was with my family and we were thankful for all of the gifts God has given us.
Before you go to wherever your Thanksgiving traditions might take you, come to Thanksgiving Eve worship at St. Luke Ann Arbor on Wednesday, November 26, at 7:00 pm.
Come as you are, Pilgrim!
