Samantha Keller: Thanksgiving is a big deal at the Rainey house. How’d it get to be that way? Barbara Rainey explains.

Barbara Rainey: Because of our lifestyle and our routine, the only time that we could pull away and just be the eight of us, the six kids and Dennis and I, was on Thanksgiving morning. And it just sort of grew into a more and more meaningful celebration. I did it initially because I wanted the eight of us to have some time together alone without extended family, without friends. I wanted us to have a little bit of time on that day to be together and to focus on what we were grateful for.

Samantha: Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of the Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home! We’re dedicated to helping you experience God in your home. Thanks for listening!

Here in the United States, we’re about to celebrate a day that has long been one of Barbara’s favorite holidays. Better than Christmas, even. Thanksgiving Day.

Barbara: Because it’s not as commercial and because it’s uniquely American. It’s got a strong spiritual basis, strong spiritual roots. It’s all about being thankful, but it’s not commercialized. And it’s very family focused. You don’t have all the stress of Christmas and gifts and all that stuff that become very distracting to the real meaning.

Dennis Rainey: You know, when I was thinking about why Barbara and I both like Thanksgiving, it’s the one day a year when our family really, truly focuses on giving thanks. And I’m going to read a verse that for a number of years was a verse that we quoted quite frequently to our children when they were younger, growing up. Philippians 2:14 “Do all things without grumbling or disputing.” I’ve just got to tell you folks, I don’t think our family has got a corner on this, but I think our children struggle a little bit extra … or did at least when they were growing up … with being negative about one another and occasionally about life and chores …

Barbara: And parents.

Dennis: … and parents. That’s true.

Barbara: They don’t like their parents sometimes.

Dennis: And this verse, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing…” For just a few sacred moments on Thanksgiving morning, they’re all at a table. And you know what? It’s glorious. And the older they’ve gotten, the more glorious that Thanksgiving celebration has become as we focus truly on giving thanks.

Samantha: Barbara says her love of Thanksgiving has grown on her. It hasn’t always been such a big deal.

Barbara: No, actually I don’t think it was. As a kid, I loved Christmas. But it was as I became an adult and because of my love for history, I just began to understand that this is really uniquely an American tradition.
And it’s just being bypassed in our culture.

But I think it started because I was homeschooling our kids. And as a part of our home schooling, we were getting these books, and I was trying to teach history. And I just sort of did a lot of reading and became aware of the fact that this was really a fun holiday. And then because of our lifestyle and our routine, the only time that we could pull away and just be the eight of us … the six kids and Dennis and I … was on Thanksgiving morning. And it just sort of grew into a more and more meaningful celebration.

I did it initially because I wanted the eight of us to have some time together alone without extended family, without friends. I wanted us to have a little bit of time on that day to be together and to focus on what we were grateful for.

Dennis: We’ve always used the dinner table as an opportunity to build family, but also celebrate uniqueness in people, in family members around the table. And so when Barbara started initiating some of the more formal aspects of reading certain passages from history books and reading from the Bible and then passing around note cards and having them write down their blessings, the benefits of the Lord over the past 12 months, I think it became something of a tradition that now is truly one of the high points of our year. And I think you could call any one of our family members, and they would tell you that indeed Thanksgiving is a great family time for us.

Barbara: Well, the only thing that I’d add to that is that part of my motivation was I really wanted my kids to understand the history of our country, and I felt like they weren’t getting that as much as I wanted them to have it. And because that’s a strong bent in my life and we tend to parent out of the way we’re wired, I really wanted my kids to understand the Puritans and the sacrifice they made, the choices they made to come because they wanted to worship freely. I wanted them to understand the context of it beyond having a turkey and that we communicated with the Indians way back when and they helped us grow corn. I mean I wanted my kids to understand the spiritual significance.
Samantha: Barbara came up with various cards to show the different aspects related to Thanksgiving. Scenes from the early European settlers’ lives. There was even a picture of the Mayflower Compact.

Dennis: Most adults have not read the Mayflower Compact in years. Let me just read to you how it begins. “In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain and France and Ireland King, defender of the faith,” et cetera, and then it goes down through and it lists the men and what they pledge to in that compact. And it’s a great reminder, because for little kids, they break it up, because Barbara in the early days would read lengthy portions from a book, “The Light and the Glory,” by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, and truthfully the kids would get a little antsy …

Barbara: But we also had pictures for the little ones to color … little Pilgrim girls and boys that they colored, too. So …

Dennis: Yeah …

Barbara: … we kind of tried to kind of make it age appropriate, but it was a little hard.

Dennis: But these art cards really helped.

Samantha: Over the years, the Raineys’ Thanksgiving traditions evolved and developed.

Barbara: When they were littler, we went around and shared what we were thankful for, and Laura was probably one or two the first year we started doing it, and she wouldn’t even have anything to say. I’d just give them some crayons and paper and let them scribble. But then we started … all of a sudden, one year it dawned on me, the kids are saying some really fun things that I’d like to remember. And occasionally something profound. And so I just started the first year, jotting them down on … because I let the kids make little place cards out of three-by-five cards and stickers … I mean nothing fancy for our Thanksgiving meal together, and we just jotted it down on those little cards. And then I sort of started graduating to something more fancy.

Dennis: Here’s my card right here.

Barbara: They’re pretty simple, the originals.

Samantha: This was a card that one of their children made, showing something they were thankful for.

Dennis: Dennis Lee Rainey. Dennis is spelled D-I-N-N-E-S. Wonder who the home school teacher was on that day?

Barbara: Well, I didn’t give them a grade on spelling for this.
Samantha: Dennis reads one that he wrote, all the way back in 1993.

Dennis: Let me read this because this is pretty emotional right off the bat, but I was grateful for Barbara … I said, “I love her. She’s a great and godly wife.” And I got to stop and just say how Barbara does this. She’s always asked everybody to list on their card five things they’re thankful for.
Because on the plate are five kernels of corn.

Barbara: Yeah, the Pilgrims had … the second year that they were in the colony, their food source became so depleted because there were some other colonists that had arrived they weren’t counting on and weather and just lots of different things. They didn’t have enough food. And so the leaders made a decision that everyone would get five kernels of corn a day. And they lived on that through the winter of I’m not sure exactly how many months. But at least December, January, February, and March.

Dennis: Well, what would happen is she’d pass a little basket around, and you’d pick up one of the five kernels of corn, you’d drop it in the basket, and then you’d read off of your card one of your five things you’re thankful for. And here are my five. You don’t do this all in order. You actually go around the circle, around the family …

Barbara: Five times.

Dennis: … five times, one for each kernel of corn. And so you get to share one at a time, and everybody kind of celebrates each person’s Thanksgiving list. And my first one was Barbara. “I love her. She’s a great and godly wife. There’s a job where I can teach the Scriptures and challenge others to follow Christ. That was what I was thankful for. Third, two little girls and for Ashley coming home and our family being together again.” She’d been away at college and so Ashley was home. And then the one that was emotional that I listed on this Thanksgiving Day in 1993, for Samuel’s response to his muscular dystrophy. Actually, listing them here, that was the first thing I thought of and listed on that, and I looked up Samuel’s card, and his list contained Ashley coming home, he was grateful for his family … this is a 13, 14-year-old boy at this point … he was thankful for MD and Mayo Clinic. And his list goes on from there, including being thankful for a great brother. And, you know, those are moments in your family when you are commanded in Scripture to give thanks, even for the trials, the tragedies, and the disappointments that come your way as a family. And it’s interesting to see how God has used a physical handicap in a young adolescent boy’s life to mark him and use him for Jesus Christ.

Barbara: But there’s something about our Thanksgiving morning celebration that’s become such a tradition that we all look forward to it, we all sort of start thinking ahead of time what we’re grateful for, and everyone really is genuinely appreciative of one another and of what God has provided for us. It’s that moment of perspective that we all as parents long for that we wish we could have all the time, but we don’t.

Samantha: In 1993, the younger Rainey children were still in elementary school. Dennis reads from another card from that year.

Dennis: Well, here’s Deborah who at the time was just about ten. She was grateful for “my best friend Laura. Number two, to have a family. Number three, to go to church. Number four, to have a home. Number five, to praise Jesus.”
Barbara: Well, here’s a good one, too, from the … well, this is ’94 and this is Laura’s. Her first one is Uncle Jim … that’s my youngest brother. Aunt Snow, that’s his wife. Number is three is “my big sis Rebecca and my big bro like Samuel”. Number four, “my cousin so I can play and write them”. And number five, she’s thankful for Mimi, who is my grandmother. And then she put in parentheses, “Even though I don’t remember her, she is a good grandma.” Because she had already died a couple of years previous and Laura really didn’t remember her but she’d heard stories and so she wrote down she was thankful for her.

Samantha: When kids—when families write down what they’re thankful for, the key isn’t necessarily what they put down on their cards. It’s that it helps cultivate a habit of the heart.

Barbara: It’s helping them focus on what’s really important in life, and we have to train our kids to do that because they’re naturally not going to do that. Of course, we don’t either. We have to discipline ourselves to focus on what God has given and on being thankful.

Dennis: You know, the psalm says … Psalm 95:2, “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms, for the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.”

And I began to list some of the things associated with Thanksgiving, and if you think about it, these are all things we associate with the day of Thanksgiving … hymns, songs, it mentions in Scripture, sacrifice, an offering, prayer. But most importantly, the thing that appears most in Scripture is that of an attitude. And I think it’s the core of worship. It may be when we get to heaven, we may find out that the day we were closest to truly worshiping God was on Thanksgiving because we forgot ourselves, we turned from our petty interests and lifted our hearts heavenward to thank God for Mommy, Daddy, brother, sister, our family, good health, a church. I just think it’s a very healthy exercise. In fact, just in reviewing all of what we’ve experienced around the holiday of Thanksgiving, it made me wonder, why don’t we do this more often? Because it’s so healthy, it’s so refreshing, and it’s so encouraging.

Samantha: So how about you? Do you have any family traditions that help nurture hearts of gratitude? We’d love to hear about it. If you find this podcast episode on Substack, you can add your comments there. Maybe you’re already listening through Substack. If not, head over to BarbaraRainey.substack.com. Let us know what you like to do around this time of year to cultivate thankfulness to God.

If you’ve enjoyed listening today, would you consider making a donation to Ever Thine Home? Our listeners' generous support allows us to bring you so much free content. And your gift makes podcasts like this possible.

Thanks for listening today. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and join us again for the Barbara Rainey Podcast, from Ever Thine Home.