Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Thanksgiving is steeped in tradition, to include sharing a meal with those you love while thinking of the many blessings bestowed upon you and your family over the past 11 months.

While it’s important to spend quality time with your family, the majority of blue-collar Americans see Thanksgiving Day as a late-week break from the daily grind of work. Despite that brief break, many will use the day to catch-up on a long list of household chores – for men that means raking leaves and tidying up the yard just in time to decorate it for the Christmas season.

But when the “dinner bell” rings, we’ll rush inside where the smell of roasted turkey and all the traditional trimmings fill our nostrils and kick our appetite into a higher gear.

We can thank our Pilgrim forefathers for this chance to stuff our bellies with the bountiful, not to mention tasty, morsels of Earth. It was the Pilgrims, settling into the New England area in the early 17th century, who shared a meal with the Native Americans in celebration of a good harvest, thusly establishing America’s version of Thanksgiving Day.

Prior to Europeans braving the seas to settle in North America, western Europeans observed harvest festivals in order to celebrate the successful completion of gathering the crops. In the British Isles, Loaf Mass Day was observed to celebrate a good wheat harvest.

In 1623, two years after the English colonists who settled what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, a serious drought turned the annual harvest celebration (one first observed in 1621) into a day of fasting and prayer. Amazingly, while the Pilgrims prayed, rains fell from the heavens – thusly turning the day into one of giving thanks to God and his blessings.

The Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving following an American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 during the Revolutionary War.

The state of New York became the first American colony to adopt Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. Other states soon followed, but their celebrations came on different days in November.

By presidential order in 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving in order to boost the morale of the Union troops. Following the Civil War, Congress enacted Lincoln’s idea into a national holiday.

As we gather on Thursday of this week to celebrate this special holiday, please take a moment to whisper a prayer for those in western North Carolina and other areas of the south that Hurricane Helene devastated in late September of this year. That storm caused catastrophic flooding in our mountains, turning tranquil streams and rivers into raging waterways, washing away homes, roads, businesses and, sadly, claiming lives. As of Nov. 21, there are 103 verified storm-related fatalities in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene. Another 15-or-so remain unaccounted for.

I don’t have the exact number, but there are countless survivors in our mountain counties who managed to escape Helene’s wrath with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Their homes are gone; their cars destroyed. I’m hopeful that they have located some sort of shelter over their heads by now, especially with the cold winter months ahead. But what about warm clothing and blankets?

As you read these words, a group of volunteers from the Roanoke-Chowan area have completed their journey to western North Carolina. There, they will serve a traditional Thanksgiving meal to 5,000 storm survivors and have prepared another meal – this one featuring eastern ‘Carolina barbecue, slaw, Brunswick Stew, and hushpuppies – that will be served to 500 military veterans.

The majority of these volunteers hail from my home county of Northampton. I attended high school with many of those individuals who are giving freely of their time, resources, and even their money to help those in need.

I mingled among them, snapping photos of their work, this past Sunday at the Seaboard Lions Club where they gathered to cook the meals and pack household and personal items that will be distributed among the hurricane survivors.

David Burke is the man behind this particular mission. David is no stranger when it comes to helping his fellow man. As an award-winning chef at barbecue competitions and a judge for the North Carolina Pork Council, he has staged quite a few fundraisers to benefit someone in need. However, this time around, he is orchestrating perhaps his largest mission….one that includes not only a meal, but an effort to help these hurricane survivors try to get back on their feet.

To me, what David and his small army of volunteers are doing perfectly aligns with what giving thanks is all about. They, along with numerous businesses that donated the food and even made sure that David had the means to safely transport everything, are able to give and show love and support for our “brothers and sisters” in Western North Carolina.

What I witnessed personally on Sunday in Seaboard, and what I hope to view later this week once the photos documenting the trip fill David’s Facebook page, warmed my heart. To hear all the chatter, the laughter, and to see the smiles on the faces of these volunteers as they busied themselves with the tasks at hand made me wonder if they are the ones who will be blessed for their efforts rather than those on the receiving end.

So, when you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal, remember how the holiday came to being and please thank God for allowing you to live in the greatest nation on the face of the Earth…a place where David Burke and his volunteers uplift us all.

 Cal Bryant is Editor of Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact him at cal.bryant@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7207.