Today, along with millions of other Americans, I will gather with friends and family to celebrate Thanksgiving, easily my favorite holiday of the year — and not just because turkey happens to be my favorite meal.
In the crazy, hectic world in which we live, it’s easy to forget that, despite all the problems and challenges we face, we have much to be thankful for. Thanksgiving affords us an opportunity to pause, take stock, and offer up thanks for all the blessings that have been bestowed upon us.
As patriarch of the family, it usually falls upon me to offer a prayer of thanks before the meal begins. I consider it a great honor and I look forward to it every year.
Here’s my prayer for 2025. Feel free to read it aloud at your gathering or use it as inspiration to write your own. Happy Thanksgiving.
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Lord, we give thanks for those friends and family members gathered here with us to share in thy bounty. We are most grateful for their presence.
We take time to remember those absent from this table. Those whose flights were repeatedly cancelled and have given up and who are now forced to spend this holiday at a local greasy-spoon diner or Chinese restaurant. They will be missed.
We remember the fatefully departed — those who remain in transit, standing in line at an endless airport security checkpoint or who are entering their fifth hour sitting on a tarmac, waiting to take off, unknowing of what delays still await them when they land, hopefully at the airport of their intended destination. May they arrive here healthy and safely, even if it isn’t until Saturday, when all others have long since gone home.
We remember Brown-skinned Hispanic friends and family members who are spending this holiday alone in their home with the doors locked and the shades drawn. They dare not risk going outdoors, being mistaken for undocumented immigrants and disappeared to some far away detention center by misguided ICE agents. May these agents, and their supervisors, inspired by the words of Pope Leo, see the error of their ways and repent now, lest they be deported to the everlasting fires of hell for all eternity.
We give thanks for the parents of unvaccinated children who have opted to remain home rather than risk spreading the measles to grandma and grandpa and all those gathered here today with underlying medical conditions. May they, too, see the error of believing in false profiteers.
We pray Lord, that in these hard times of affordability, the bounty before us is plentiful and sufficient, and that all those who are partaking of this feast are mindful of such before reaching for seconds and thirds of everything, as has become the tradition over the years.
We pray, too, that now that the hour of breaking bread has finally arrived, certain members of this family will allow for the TV set, and its endless football games, to be turned off. May their attention be directed solely to giving thanks and enjoying the warmth, love and camaraderie of the beloved friends and family members gathered here today.
However, we also pray, Heavenly Father, for a miracle: If the Cowboys can’t win against the Chiefs, can they at least cover the spread? Of this we most fervently beseech you.
Dear Lord, we shall be eternally thankful if any and all discussion of politics be banished from this home for the entire time we are gathered. We further implore you to banish from the mouths of middle-age men all painfully corny Thanksgiving Dad Jokes, especially ones like, “What did the mother turkey say to her disobedient children? If your father could see you now, he’d turn over in his gravy!”
We offer our sincerest thanks for the turkey, whose ultimate sacrifice gives us sustenance here today. We pray its ending was painless and humane and nothing like the ugly and disturbing fate it endured at the hands of our family’s 40-year-old electric knife. May it rest in pieces.
Finally, Lord, we ask for your mercy in the coming days. May the time between now and Christmas morning be filled with stress-free shopping experiences. May the TV commercials be muted, the markdowns plentiful, the checkout lines short, the porch pirates few and the endless playing of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” nonexistent. For all of this and more we humbly pray, Lord.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
Ficarra is a freelance writer.
