Thanksgiving Impact!

How well do you know your Thanksgiving history?  Important facts first.  When was the first NFL Thanksgiving Day football game played?

• What year was the first Thanksgiving celebrated?
• What year and which president established the celebration of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November?

The first NFL Thanksgiving Day football game was played in 1934, in the University of Detroit Stadium between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears.  The 11-0 Chicago Bears beat the 10-1 Detroit Lions 19-16 in front of a sellout crowd of 26,000.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621.  After the first harvest in the new world, Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony invited the Pilgrims to keep a day of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was established on the last Thursday in November in 1863.  After the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln urged the nation to observe a day of prayer and thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was founded and reinforced in the midst of challenges, difficulties, pain and suffering.  Bradford and Lincoln knew the power of thanks and gratitude.  What is it about thanks and gratitude that make it amazingly simply, perplexing, and challenging yet eternally rewarding?  The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratis that means grace, graciousness or gratefulness.  Feeling thankful and demonstrating thanks are two different things.  Demonstrating thankfulness is powerful while feeling thankful is fleeting.

Giving thanks and demonstrating gratefulness is an act of acknowledgement and credit.  It is something you do, it can be learned and it has the power to change your life and the lives of people you come in contact with every day.

When you embrace an attitude of gratitude and share thanks and appreciation with others your brain engages in what neurologists call a virtuous cycle.  The science is based on the fact that the brain cannot focus on a negative and a positive at the same time.  When you focus on the positive, embrace an attitude of gratitude, give thanks and share appreciation your brain begins a virtuous cycle.  Think of a virtuous cycle as Thanksgiving dinner for the brain.  Once you start expressing thanks and gratitude your brain starts looking for things to be thankful and grateful for and you have engaged in a virtuous cycle.

You only want to start a virtuous cycle if you are interested in increased determination, attention, energy, enthusiasm, and mental toughness.  Not to mention improved goal achievement, decision making, and productivity. 

Now there is food for thought.  Speaking of food, what’s for dinner on Thanksgiving?  Oh, how we enjoy the turkey dinner with all of the trimmings and the homemade pumpkin pie.  Top is all off this year with a big serving of thanks and gratitude.  Carry it with you in your home, into your workplace, and into your community.  Live in the moment of each day with an eye to the abundance around you and within you.  Express your appreciation freely and look for opportunities to share your gifts and abundance with others.  Sharing thanks and gratitude demonstrates a continual celebration of life and honors God who gives us life and the gift of eternal life.

“Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.”

-Henry Ward Beecher

Happy Thanksgiving!

What do you love most about Thanksgiving?