A pragmatic giving of thanks is what went on in farm country – knowing that we had that for which to be thankful (the seasons and the crops) and knowing Who to thank.  Our thanks-giving included an acknowledgement that the Gracious God who oversees  earth and time is also a staple of the foundations of our nation.
Such thanks-giving has taken many forms and found many expressions, but it always rises from thankful hearts who  know their dependence on God. It has molded itself to a variety of liturgies, fractured children’s plays about the pilgrims, and – in farm country – it found a place in the annual Harvest Festival in our country churches.
Near the middle of November an evening was set aside to decorate the church with the harvest.
Sheaves of wheat arranged to spray out just so were attached to the side windows of the sanctuary which in mid-fall were also occasionally covered with thick frost in the morning. They might be attached to the pews like so many decorations for a fall bridal display.
Larger bouquets of wheat and oats would fill the places on the altar that were occupied during the summer by gladiolas and roses from the gardens of the farmers’ wives.
A long serving table would be set in a place of honor, at the head of the aisle at the bottom of the three wide steps leading up to the altar rail, and it would be filled, beginning in the center, with every kind of produce from every field, every garden, every tree that bore fruit (not so many of those in eastern Montana) – scattered within the finished display would be piles of freshly dug potatoes, carrots, onions, squash, pumpkins, some brightly changed autumn leaves and always – throughout – the wheat and the oats – like sparklers of the field showing their beauty.
When the hymns were sung at the Harvest Festival Service, usually held on a Wednesday night, they were sung with gusto and knowing:

We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand….

Our Thanksgiving observations never focused on stuff. The subject of thanksgiving was God, the Lord of Hosts, the Creator  and the bounty of the earth that is His ongoing provision to this day.
God as Creator and Giver was not a fine point of doctrine or a mystery to be fussed about (like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin discussions). Farmers know that the storehouses of snow and rain are God’s and that if they got them, it’s because He gave them. There’s a certainty in such experience and such faith that can’t be learned in Sunday School or from sermons. They live it. And the fact of the thing didn’t change for the convenience of those few farmers who chose not to acknowledge God – they just had a tougher row to how as they tried to make sense of what is so and tried to control what happened.
So the singing was strong. The heaped-high harvest table of bounty that be in the church all through November until the beginning of Advent, and it was beautiful. Colorful. Detailed. Very satisfying to look at. Even as the corn husks dried out and the heavy wheat heads drooped further over, the kaleidoscope still spoke of  provision and gratitude. The beauty of the table was the same whether the crops were scanty or full.
The Harvest Festival was not due to a good harvest or a great harvest. It was an acknowledgement of the God who gives.
After the service we would all troop down to the basement for hours of fun that would including a fishing pond run by the high school students, and other busy little games that kept the children entertained until 9:30 or 10:00 when they started to get tired and would go and find their mothers so they could sit next to them, lay their head on Mama’s lap and doze off while the visiting went on until as late as 11:00 on particularly raucous evenings.
All of this was supported by the tables spread with sandwiches, cakes, koolaid, hot dishes, cookies, and everybody’s favorite fall treats.
It is not easy, perhaps, to get this fact into focus: these farm families, some now with children in their teens or married and moved away to raise their families on the east coast or the west cost, some of them into the third generation owning the same farm who never left the county – all of them were the same farm families that had settled this community fifty years early. No one new moved in. No one old moved out.
These gatherings were repetitious and similar in content, but always had fresh life and depth and meaning – year after year. Their visits over their coffee reflected strength and meaningful conversation.
On one of my visits back, some years after our farm had been sold following my father’s death in 1962, I had such a wonderful visit with my cousin whose farm was next to ours. In the middle of long, lazy summers, she and I would meet at a corner where her dad’s fields touched our fields, riding madly down the fence line in the bumpy grass that was the border, and happily visit there for twenty or thirty minutes before turning our bikes homeward and heading back – just as fast – to return to our chores.
As we visited on this more grownup occasion, now both having children and me living in California, I said, “You know, I so often think of you – and wonder – how is it that I did not stay here – ”
And she said immediately with wistfulness, “So often I wonder why it is I stayed. Why did we stay? Would it have been better if we had left and found a way elsewhere like you did?”
We concluded that there was no right or wrong in the thing. Different choices. Good things to be found anywhere. Difficulties to be dealt with anywhere.
On Thanksgiving Day the country churches always had a full service at the regular hour. Since the focus of Thanksgiving was the One to Whom we gave thanks, it just made sense to get together and pray and sing.
Good times. Good people. Very good God.