Every November, as Thanksgiving approaches, I hear a common complaint: There just aren’t that many Thanksgiving songs. As I’m preparing for our feast, I’m often scrambling to find the right music to go along with our meal. Americans are eager to sing, play, record, and share Christmas music, but not so much for the “younger brother” smaller holiday a few weeks earlier. As a result, those who are hosting parties or dinners are often left scavenging for the best songs to cobble together for the fourth Thursday in November.
In 2020, singer/songwriter Ben Rector released his “Thanksgiving Song.” (It should be said: this song is on an album featuring Ben dressed up as Santa Claus.) In this song, Ben recounts the sights and sounds common to a Thanksgiving gathering: noticing the little ones are starting to resemble the older relatives, wondering who rightfully occupies the “kids’ table,” and watching football together. He ends by saying:
So fill your plate and fill your drink
Put your dishes in the kitchen sink
And let the leftover year just wash away
’Cause we made it through, I do believe
The longest year in history
Thank God that it’s Thanksgiving Day [1]
Here he draws into sharp relief the bitter and the sweet that many of us felt during the holidays after Covid. After months and months of sadness and isolation, we were making attempts at being celebratory again. It felt foreign. It still felt sad in many ways, some of which would remain unresolved. And yet, there were still ways to give thanks.
The bittersweet nature of life ought to spur us to gratitude. We know that the sweetness can be fleeting; when we glimpse rich beauty, the fallenness of the world is right there with us. How much more, then, must we give thanks for the beauty we see.
The man who journeys far from home sees his home in every strange place—it is far from him, and yet it is always there with him. Strangers remind him of his family. The sunrise on an unfamiliar horizon causes him to miss the familiar one—the one he can see in his mind’s eye no matter where he is. The bitterness of being away means he is more thankful for the times when he’s brought near. The sweet is sweeter as a result of the bitter.
This juxtaposition can also be seen in the opening lines of Horatio Spafford’s hymn “It Is Well With My Soul”:
When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea-billows roll [2]
If we’re blithely singing along, we might not notice we’re singing about two utterly different circumstances: one is peaceful and abundant; the other describes sadness overwhelming and nearly drowning us. Sweet and bitter. And yet, the hymn echoes again and again “it is well with my soul.”
You may know the story of the composition of this hymn: the writer lost his fortune in the Great Chicago Fire and his only son died of scarlet fever at a young age. After these tragedies, Spafford decided to send his four daughters and wife ahead of him to England. The ship they were on collided with another mid-journey, and his daughters were all lost. Spafford received a telegram from his wife with only the words “Saved alone.” During his own crossing of the Atlantic, Spafford composed the hymn we know today.
Mysteriously, grace makes gratitude possible in times of tragedy. God, in His kindness, enables those who are struck with sadness to again lift their eyes and carry on in thanksgiving. The saints I have seen who are able to hold tragedy in one hand and gratitude in the other are the most rugged, hearty people I know. Perhaps you know some like these as well. They are the weathered and tested ones. Their faith runs as deep as a taproot.
These persevering ones do not try to look sunnily on tragedy and attempt to call it good. God is not honored by a lack of honesty in that way—our Bible is full of the testimonies of saints rightly calling evil and sadness by name. Persevering saints look sadness full in the face and fight for the vision to see through—to see beyond—their circumstances.
Far from what the world might call “denial,” we can look honestly on the grief in our lives and still give thanks. We give thanks because we trust the Giver of all things. We give thanks because we are able to see sweetness for what it is when we see it. We give thanks because, at the end of all things, it is well with our souls.
[1] Ben Rector. (2020). “The Thanksgiving Song.” On A Ben Rector Christmas.
[2] “When Peace, Like a River” was written by Horatio Spafford in 1873 and is more commonly known as “It Is Well With My Soul.” You can read it in full in the Trinity Hymnal at Hymnary.org.
The featured image, “Withered Rose,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Kelly Keller writes the weekly Substack On the Common, encouraging Christians to labor for the flourishing of their homes, churches, and communities. She is the Managing Editor of Story Warren, as well as a contributor at The Rabbit Room, The Gospel Coalition, and Risen Motherhood. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.
When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.
Very well said.