By Joyce Penland, CFRE
The Christmas lights in my neighborhood were installed the day before Halloween, and the Christmas décor has been on display for months in my favorite craft stores. If you, too, are seeing snowflakes, sleigh bells, and Santa Claus alongside pumpkins and Pilgrims, then you know what I’m talking about.
In the mad ramp up to Christmas, many of us mourn the fact that Thanksgiving is getting lost in the shuffle. Thanksgiving has been a federal holiday for more than 150 years, established during the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln as a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
Over time, however, Christmas has slowly become more prevalent earlier in the holiday season, and our beloved Thanksgiving seems to have waned in prominence.
In my grade school days, we acted out scenes from the “First Thanksgiving” that was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621. Replete with cardboard hats and large white collars, we “Pilgrim women” would bring Indian corn, gourds, and popcorn to school to mark the bounty of the harvest, shared by the Plymouth settlers and their Native American friends.
Back then, I distinctly remember that Thanksgiving had its own place in the holiday continuum and had not yet been swallowed up in the Christmas maelstrom.
Today we may need to work a little harder to give Thanksgiving its rightful honor, but, for those who work in nonprofits, giving thanks is our raison d’être all year long. Successful nonprofits celebrate and recognize those who are generous to our organizations and demonstrate our gratitude to our donors in meaningful ways 365 days a year.
So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, the team at Bacon Lee & Associates is genuinely thankful for another year of productive work in partnership with you, our clients and friends. We appreciate your efforts to inspire philanthropy that allows for meaningful work to be done in our communities for the benefit of many.
We wish you, your families, your colleagues, and your clients a very blessed Thanksgiving.