What Are You Thankful For on Thanksgiving?

Ah, Thanksgiving – a busy, often frenetic "holiday" of crowded supermarkets, lines at airports, traffic jams and endless cooking, frequently tinged with anxiety over potential culinary calamities and possible clashes among dinner guests.

At the same time, Thanksgiving can also mean genuinely enjoyable feasting and fellowship.

And no matter what challenges and joys Thanksgiving may bring, it may be well to pause a moment to remember the reason for the holiday.

Almost any school child can tell you it commemorates the first harvest feasts shared by the Pilgrims and Native Americans at Plymouth colony.

When Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday in 1863, he proclaimed it "a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens." We've become a more secular nation since then, but we still enjoy many blessings for which Thanksgiving provides an occasion for us to offer thanks.

So, as editor of El Cerrito Patch, I want to thank our readers in El Cerrito, Kensington and beyond. I want to thank you not only for being readers but also for often being active contributors.

Your comments on articles, news tips, letters to the editor, guest columns, guest features, event listings, announcements, posts and "likes" on our Facebook page, photos, occasional videos, reviews and ratings of businesses in our directory, suggestions, corrections, kind words and even criticisms have combined as the active ingredients that give the site its vitality and richness.

I hear from a number of people who thank me and say they value and appreciate El Cerrito Patch. Certainly, such comments are pleasing to me personally, but I also recognize that I am a kind of combined custodian, clerk and mirror – maintaining an active forum for community communication and reporting and reflecting what our community has to offer.

So before my thoughts return to stuffed turkey, sweet potatoes and pecan pie, I want to say, "Thank you, El Cerrito Patch readers!"

And I want to invite any of you to share in the comments anything you would like to take a moment today to give thanks for.