By Heather Melton, UTO Staff Officer

Autumn came late to New Mexico this year, as I write this it is finally sweater weather and the cottonwood trees in the Bosque are just beginning to turn from green to gold. All of these subtle changes in the environment around us are ways my soul knows that fall is upon us. Perhaps it is from growing up in a farming community, but these are also cues that life can slow down a bit. (I’m not sure life slows down anymore, but my soul has hope.) Each year, once Halloween is over, our thoughts turn to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, in my opinion, is really needed in our families and communities—a day to practice gratitude with our friends, family, community, and world. This month I wanted to share a little bit of information about Thanksgiving and some ways UTO wants to help you put the “thanks” back into Thanksgiving.

In the United States, the official national holiday of Thanksgiving was created in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln as a day to celebrate gratitude and work toward unity amid the ongoing Civil War. In the proclamation for the holiday, he asked Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” Prior to this, many states had Thanksgiving holidays that coincided with local events or the harvest, and perhaps the most famous is the narrative that got tied to our Thanksgiving holiday, the 1621 harvest meal shared by Pilgrims and Wampanoag people. Unfortunately, the popularized history of that harvest meal left out the suffering of the Wampanoag and other Indigenous people at the hands of the colonists; and over time, the call to center the day on gratitude, unity, and caring for our community members who have suffered losses in the past year was forgotten. Indigenous leaders have called for reforms to the holiday and the need for Americans to educate themselves regarding the historic events. (The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., has a great webpage to help with this.) 

This year, as Thanksgiving falls a few weeks after the presidential election, the need for Thanksgiving as President Lincoln described it, is relevant in new and profound ways. I’ve started thinking about ways our gathering can not only be centered on gratitude but also on healing and helping others. One thing that we’ve added at our meal is the prayer from the UTO liturgy booklet that includes a land acknowledgement (we’ve even turned it into a pretty card you can print out and have on your table). My kids use a special “share, save, spend” bank, and each year over the holiday weekend, we open the “share” bank and decide what kind of charity they want to support with the funds from their allowance intended to help others. I’m looking for other nontraditional ways to help out in our community this month as a way of showing our gratitude for the many blessings our family has experienced in 2024. 

I hope you’ll take time to share with us on social media this month all the ways you’re putting the “thanks” into Thanksgiving. From saying thank-you to folks you might not always remember to thank (grocery store workers to mail people) to volunteering to learning more about the Indigenous people who call your community home, these are all ways we can help make November a month of thankfulness. And we at UTO want to remind you that every time you practice gratitude, you change the world. With every “thanks” we spread kindness and make connections that are so needed in our world today. Thank you, from all of us at UTO, for all the ways you put the “thanks” into Thanksgiving this month, and throughout the year.