Thanksgiving isn’t a religious Holiday, but it might be rooted in gratitude which is certainly a core Biblical theme.
Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among most religions after harvests and at other times of the year.1 Most people don’t realize that the Thanksgiving holiday’s history in North America is actually rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation.2 Special thanksgiving religious services became mandatory by law during the reign of Henry VIII.3 Before 1536 there were 95 Church holidays, plus every Sunday, when people were required to attend church and forego work. The Puritan party in the Anglican Church wished to eliminate all Church holidays apart from the weekly Lord’s Day, including the traditional church feasts (now typically associated with ancient Judaism) which is what started the protest reformation, or “protesting” of the church married government.
So fast forward about 100 years later and you get to the story that you probably thought started Thanksgiving. Thirty-eight English settlers aboard the ship Margaret arrived by way of the James River to Charles City County, Virginia on December 4, 1619. The landing was immediately followed by a religious celebration, specifically dictated by the group’s charter from the London Company, in accordance with the English government mandates still in effect described in the paragraph above. The charter declared, “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”4 Sometimes, I think wouldn’t it be great if our government had that kind of admiration for the Lord, maybe they did at one time. But as history would show, even the conservative Christians still had their sum of issues with that government, and rightly so.
You might have made the connection above; the church of England was actually mandating the celebration of the Biblical feasts given in the Torah to Israel. Which is bizarre to us today, the government in the 1500’s was actually mandating people by law to follow the Bible. I actually don’t like much of any government stipulations telling us what we can and can’t do, but this is still very interesting to me.
Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths, is a Torah-commanded observance celebrated for seven days, beginning on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei. It was one of the three Pilgrimage Festivals on which Israelites were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. Biblically an autumn harvest festival and a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt.5
The names used in the Bible is specifically “Festival of Ingathering” or “Harvest Festival”, חַג הָאָסִיף, and “Festival of Booths” חג הסכות, this corresponds to the double significance of Sukkot. The one mentioned in the Book of Exodus is agricultural in nature—”Festival of Ingathering at the year’s end” (Exodus 34:22)—and marks the end of the harvest time and thus of the agricultural year in the Land of Israel. The more elaborate religious significance from the Book of Leviticus is that of commemorating the Exodus and the dependence of the Israelites on the will of God (Leviticus 23:42–43). They describe the same observed festival.6
Don’t miss this – the harvest festival was rooted in the work of your hands connected to sacred soil. It was circular (dance of grace language). The Lord gave you a gift of grace tied to a provision in sacred land and connected to Him continually dwelling amongst them. Taking up residence in their most intimate places which culminated in Jesus literally residing in the temple of your heart. The response should be open hands back unto the LORD.
Every time you open your hands unto the LORD you should be reminded of His gift of Grace.
Over the years, Thanksgiving has traditionally become celebrated much later than Sukkot (which was October 7-13 this year, Thanksgiving in the US is the last Thursday in November) and has thus likely separated any sort of comparison or association of the two within the Evangelical United States. But the idea of inviting your family and guests to your Thanksgiving feast and taking on a mindset of Gratitude certainly originated in the Bible around this feast.7
The Hebrew word sukkoṯ is the plural of sukkah (‘booth’ or ‘tabernacle’) – we might simply call these tents in English. As stated in Leviticus these were the fragile dwellings in which the Israelites dwelled during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. The Lord resided their with them as an image of enduring faithfulness. For the last several thousand years, throughout those observing the Biblical holiday, meals are eaten inside the sukkah and many people sleep there as well. Within traditional Judaism, this is a mitzvah, or commandment, to ‘dwell’ in the sukkah. There was also an emphasis (as with all the Biblical feasts) to pass this on orally and in spirit to your children.
Sukkot was and is a reminder to return to simple living in gratitude to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
This brings us to Thanksgiving celebrated in modern America. What do we do with it? Do we make it about Jesus? Well, if you are a devout follower shouldn’t everything be about Jesus? Do we take advantage of the world celebrating a theme that clearly originated in the Bible to invite those into our home and show them the Love of Jesus? That sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? At least Thanksgiving unlike Christmas and Easter isn’t steeped in all sorts of pagan religion; there is a great argument that it is primarily of Biblical origins.
Thanksgiving is certainly a key Biblical theme, but I prefer the word gratitude.
And I shall lift up my hands to Your commandments, which I love; and I will meditate on Your statutes. Psalm 119:48 NASB
Lift up my hands – וְאֶשָּׂ֚א כַפַּ֗י אֶל־מִ֖צְוֹתֶיךָ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אָהָ֗בְתִּי וְאָשִׂ֥יחָה בְחֻקֶּֽיךָ
Miṣwâ, is a command language, if your faithful, you do this. Ahēb, to love (“that I love”), and śîaḥ, to meditate (but not silently, aloud in communal part). The verb is nāśāʾ, to lift, carry, or take. But there is no nun in the form in this verse. That is strange, but it is because the future tense drops the nun and becomes (first person singular) אֶשָּׂא. So, we have אֶשָּׂא preceded by the prefixed vav. And that means it should be “I lifted up my hands.” The psalmist isn’t anticipating a future gesture of gratitude to God for His commandments. He has already made the gesture, just as in the previous verse, he has already delighted in the fatherly order God provided. The psalmist certainly believes in this as a command to generations that follow. There are several Torah verses that seem to imply this was perceived as a soft command by Yahweh but we don’t really every get this directly from His hand. Therefore, it hasn’t carried over to evangelical Christianity in that way, although it is certainly counted in the 613 laws. That should hit you a little harder next time you’re in church and people are raising their hands in praise. And some people would believe that Paul was reiterating the keeping of this command in 1 Timothy 2:8 which also takes a similar imperative.
This text finishes with the words “hands” (kappa – kap). Palm of the hand is the best translation here, but kap is also used of hands spread out in prayer in Ex 29:25 and Isa 1:15. “8 The psalmist chooses a rather rare word to describe hands instead of the usual word yad to make sure that we pause and reflect upon a more specific act.
Palms upward is a gesture for receptive gratitude. So as long as you are thinking about this next time you worship, to be precise, your hands are not together like you’re praying on your knees or at the table, not straight up over your head like your praying for fire from heaven, not clenched like the Pharisee, but open to receive which really meant hear according to the Shema – in a submissive posture, and perhaps not even extended above one’s head. This is the posture of a grateful servant who has received something wonderful and valuable from a loving master.
Many scholars believe that Jesus was alluding to this in Matt 6:5. The NIV reads,
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
But when you read the Greek, you will notice that the phrase “standing to pray” comes off as idiomatic. In Greek the words “standing and receive” are connected when is used by Jesus in a clever word play. Standing shouldn’t be read as the emphasis of the verse. The emphasis is posture, but you can see how that then becomes a play on words. Jesus hits it on the head, their “uprightness” was likely showing in their posture of hands “standing” over their heads, it wasn’t a picture of humble submission. Or they were upright not kneeling hands out of submission to the Lord. In other words, you receive what God has for you in submission with a humble heart posture of gratitude. If you miss this, the world is your reward. I also don’t believe the hermeneutic leads us to legalism over the posture of our body or hands, but rather the aims at the heart. Some believe that Jesus here was reminding the church that his mission was humble and as that of a lowly shepherd, not high in the sky as a luminary or god over them. His mission was to invite the world to join this humble calling steeped in devotion. Perhaps the first century religious culture had lost their humble approach to the Lord, and this was in part the emphasis of Jesus. The “euangelion” that brought salvation, freedom and peace wrapped in humility the world couldn’t fathom.
Hands outstretched, palms open to Jesus shows Gratitude bathed in submission and brings devotion ushering heaven to earth.
- Hodgson, Godfrey (2006). A Great and Godly Adventure; The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving. New York: Public Affairs. p. 212. ISBN 978-1586483739. ↩︎
- Baker, James W. (2009). Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday. UPNE. ISBN 978-1-58465-801-6. ↩︎
- Forbes, Bruce David (October 27, 2015). America’s Favorite Holidays: Candid Histories. University of California Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-520-28472-2. ↩︎
- Alvin J. Schmidt (2004). How Christianity Changed the World. Zondervan. ISBN 9780310264491. Archived from the original on January 17, 2023. ↩︎
- Farber, Zev. “The Origins of Sukkot”. http://www.thetorah.com. ↩︎
- Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. (2020). “The Origins and Ancient History of Sukkot”. A History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods. Brown Judaic Studies. ↩︎
- “The Ushpizin”. Library. Chabad. October 20, 2024. ↩︎
- Archer, G. L. (1999). 1022 כפף. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 452). Moody Press. ↩︎
EXPEDITION 44 