Samantha: Today, on the Barbara Rainey Podcast:

Narrator: For an entire day, November 10, 1620, a discussion went on in the main cabin of the Mayflower.
Mr. Trevore: Mr. Bradford, sir, this land we have come upon ship’s master Jones saith not to be in the Virginias at all.
William Bradford: True enough, Mr. Trevore. We know not with certainty what land God hath set us upon, but we believe it to be a good land, called Plymouth, by the Cape of Cod.
Mr. Trevore: Best for us if it is a fat land, for our stores are well nigh eaten through already.
Man: Then, if our stores be depleted, we who must do the work are better served in the Virginias! We know but little of this land nor the people thereof nor whether our labors will be blessed here.

Samantha: We’re going to listen to the book, written by Barbara Rainey, Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember.

Welcome to the Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home, where we want to help you experience God in your life and home. Thanks for listening!

Barbara’s always been passionate about helping families celebrate holidays in ways that are spiritually meaningful. And she says one of the most neglected holidays in the U-S is Thanksgiving. I guess you could say she’s not a fan of Christmas decorations hitting the stores months ahead of time. In fact, here’s Barbara, along with her husband, Dennis.

Dennis: Tell them what your soapbox is about Christmas decorations showing up around Halloween.

Barbara: Yeah, they show up two months ahead, usually, and sometimes more.

Dennis: And you're pleased about that?

Barbara: It really bothers me. I just feel like they're rushing it, and we don't get a chance to live in the present, because we're always bombarded with what's coming two months from now and three months from now, and I just think it instills a sense of panic that "I've got to get on it," and we really have lots of time, and I think it's more important to enjoy the present.

Samantha: I’m sure that sense of urgency isn’t entirely accidental! Dennis says, by overlooking Thanksgiving, our culture is neglecting some important opportunities.

Dennis: Barbara and I really believe that this is the one holiday throughout the year that is uniquely a family holiday that I think galvanizes family relationships as few times during the year can.

Samantha: I don’t know how you and your family celebrate Thanksgiving, but in Dennis’s growing up years it involved the traditional ingredients: turkey, stuffin’, pumpkin pie, lots of food, and of course, watching football.

Dennis: But there wasn't the historical or the spiritual emphasis that, really, Barbara has helped our family enjoy, after we've done this tradition over and over and over again, that it finally begins to sink in what a rich holiday in terms of our faith, in terms of the historical perspective of our nation, in terms of the courage and the sacrifice of the pilgrims and what they did to form a new nation, and how we can begin to tap into that and not merely relive the past but learn from the lessons of the past, and then, most importantly, I think, do what the holiday is all about, which is give thanks and give thanks as a family.

Samantha: The Rainey family’s Thanksgiving traditions include rehearsing some of the events surrounding the early European settlers in New England, and following their example in giving thanks to God, even in some dire situations. She explains how it came about.

Barbara: First of all, Dennis was speaking at a conference every year over the Thanksgiving holiday, and part of that conference was a banquet that we all attended, he and I and the children, but it was with about 300 other people or 400 other people. So it wasn't very private, and I just felt like we needed to do something with our children that was just us over the Thanksgiving holiday, because we had spent all these years with other people. So that was the first motivation – was to establish some kind of a tradition that was just for our family on Thanksgiving Day.

The second reason that I got real motivated to do this is because as my children started going to school, I realized that they weren't learning much about the real reasons behind the holiday. Their information was sketchy. They learned some correct names, they learned about Squanto and the Indians, and they learned about – they may have had some of the facts straight, but they weren't getting the real spiritual side of the story, and I knew there was a whole lot more to the story than what they were learning, and I wanted them to know the real story.

So I found a book that I'd marked just certain portions of, and I began to read that to our kids periodically, and I also began to have our children record what they were thankful for every Thanksgiving Day, and that sort of was my way of pulling our family together on Thanksgiving Day, giving us something that we could do together that would focus on the spiritual side of the holiday.

Dennis: I think there's an additional benefit to our family that Barbara is minimizing. She was a history major in college, and so she's enjoyed good stories about history and the stories that set the context for our nation, and she had many of these stories, and as she began to read them to our family, frankly, for me, in high school and college, history was kind of boring.

But as Barbara began to read the stories and kind of became like a history professor to our family, I literally began to see a holiday born again, as it were, in my own heart and mind, as I listened to the story of the real Thanksgiving, the real pilgrims, the real holiday, and how it came about. There's something about wrapping the Christian faith with some humanity that enables us to get back into that holiday and not just have a tradition, but realize – "You know what? Our country really does have a spiritual heritage that we need to be celebrating on this day."

Samantha: Eventually, Barbara wrote her own book…something the whole family would appreciate and benefit from.

So on this episode and the next, we’re going to take some time to listen to that book by Barbara Rainey. Its title is Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember.” This is one of those moments where you can gather your kids around to listen. And maybe listening to this could become something you plan to do as part of YOUR family’s Thanksgiving this year, as well as for years to come.

Here is part one of the audio book Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember.