SOUL FOOD:

“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor…” So began George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in October 1789.

On behalf of both Houses of Congress, Washington recommended to the people of the United States that they observe “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to acknowledge “with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

Prominent among the favors he listed were “civil and religious liberty.” He set aside Nov. 26 “to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

On Oct. 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as what would become an annual national day of Thanksgiving. Two years before the end of the Civil War, Lincoln counted the nation greatly blessed yet “prone to forget the source” from which those blessings came.

So extraordinary were the nation’s blessings in Lincoln’s estimation, he believed they could not “fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

Thanksgiving Day was meant to be a solemn, reverent and grateful acknowledgment of that providence “as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.” It was to be “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens” as well as a day of “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.”

Lincoln commended the war’s widows, orphans, mourners and other sufferers to the “tender care” of this beneficent Father. He implored his “almighty hand” to heal the nation’s wounds and restore it to “peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.”

Clearly, our understanding of what is called “separation of church and state” and our understanding of the non-establishment clause has drifted far from that of either Washington or Lincoln.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I offered readers a copy of a prayer known as the Akathist of Thanksgiving or “Glory to God in all things!” I was happily surprised to receive dozens of requests.

In the Orthodox Christian Church the Akathist is read from the beginning of Advent until Christmas. It offers thanksgiving — glory to God — for the simple and the sublime.

You can read more about it in the online archives of this column. Look for “Nativity Fast brings introspection.” If you’d like a copy of the prayer, send me an e-mail with your mailing address — or for an electronic copy, your e-mail address.

Friday is Black Friday, by tradition the first shopping day of the Christmas season. Last week I recommended two alternatives to shopping in retail stores and malls.

One, the Colman Mall at Sts. Simon and Jude, will be open after the parish’s three Masses on Sunday. Another similar market at St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church was open last weekend.

These markets offer gifts in the form of donations to charities made in the name of the gifts’ recipients. What I wondered was, how do people feel about receiving such gifts?

So I asked a few locals through a Yahoo group called RecycleHBcafe. (I’ll tell you more about this group and its sister group, Freecycle™ Huntington Beach in another column soon.)

Sharon Gates wrote to say she comes from a long line of people who plant trees in Israel to commemorate lifecycle milestones. So this kind of gift giving is second nature to her.

“The point of giving a gift is to think about the recipient, hold him [or] her in your heart and find something appropriate to express your love,” she wrote. “Any gift you give is also an expression of who you are. Whether [the recipient] appreciates the gift or not is out of your hands.”

When given “alternative” gifts, Gates has felt relieved of “the burden of receiving yet another ‘thing.’”

Jady Enomoto, who once worked for a charity and processed its donation gifts, has reservations. The way she sees it, these gifts often benefit the giver more than the recipient — unless the recipient is truly passionate about the selected charity.

“I wouldn’t want such a gift,” she wrote, adding, “but perhaps I’m just greedy!” When a charitable gift involves something tangible — say a tree, or a tile or a brick at a museum, or the sponsoring of an animal — she feels a bit different.

Enomoto once sponsored a bat, Cleobatra, for herself. The photos and educational publications she got in return made her think a similar gift might be a fun learning tool for a child.

Big on having less stuff, Christy Bannister likes these gifts. “They don’t collect dust or create clutter!” she wrote.

All the same, she has some friends and family members she would never consider them for.

“[They] would make such a stink that would become the focus,” she explained, concerned the complaining could end up leaving a bad impression of a charity on others.

Bannister thinks these gifts make a perfect gift for a boss. In a situation that can prove awkward, “This solves it!” she wrote.

Longtime organic gardener Katrina Stanchfield was “tickled pink” when she got a gift card from her daughter noting the donation of vegetable seeds to a family in Africa. “It made me smile and do a little dance to visualize the produce being harvested,” she wrote.

This year, Jan D. King donated to the American Cancer Society to give a gift card to a friend. Both King and her friend have had cancer.

Most stressed the importance of not making a donation to a charity that might offend the recipient. And many complained about how many donations don’t meet local needs, or even needs within the United States.

RedefineChristmas.organd JustGive.orghave solved these problems in a clever way. Buy a donation gift card and its recipient — not you — chooses where to send the donation from a database of 1.5 million charities.

For more suggestions culled from the members of RecycleHBcafe and elsewhere, e-mail me.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].