Midweek Musing – December 31, 2025 It was my freshman year at Presbyterian College, sitting in a religion class taught by the late Rev. Dr. Jack Presseau, when my mind was quietly and quite thoroughly blown. KaBoom! We were talking about world religions and religious calendars, about festivals and feasts and fasts, about what he called “sacred time.” Somewhere in that conversation, Dr. Presseau mentioned, almost in passing that the word holiday we use today comes from the phr

This week is Thanksgiving and in addition to overeating and falling asleep on the couch watching the Detroit Lions play football it is also a time where we should pause and give gratitude and thanks. While it was an event celebrated by colonies and states since that first celebration in 1621, it was Abraham Lincoln who first issued a proclamation for this to be a national holiday. And the setting of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November didn’t happen until FDR in 19