When the autumn comes, or fall as the Americans say, it is time to give thanks for the harvest we have received, for rain and sun, for the fertile soil and the products of the cultivated land and the wild mountains and plains, for the fish in the rivers and seas, and for the birds in the sky – yes, if we have been good custodians of the environment and climate. In our time, we often forget the old-fashioned harvest because we have become used to shopping in the nearest store, or nowadays, even buying food and clothes, even readymade pizza online.

The last Thursday in November is the beginning of the Thanksgiving weekend in the USA, and it is one of the most observed holidays of all there, a time when everybody must travel to their hometown or village, or where their parents and relatives now live, because Americans keep moving, so ‘home’ is not necessarily where one grew up. But in any case, it is where the closest relatives and loved ones live.

It is easy to criticize the Americans and their way of life for many things, but when it comes to Thanksgiving and honouring family, we should give them credit and they should be proud of keeping old traditions alive. The season from Thanksgiving till Christmas and end of year is in many ways a sombre holiday season for quiet reflection and for giving thanks – in the midst of the hectic and competitive American life, in the cities and everywhere else, where nothing comes for free.

In Canada, to the north of the USA, Thanksgiving is marked in mid-October, because the harvesting season is earlier there, night frost can finish the apples, plums, garden and forest berries, and the valuable wheat fields, so one must not take risks and delay the harvesting.

In Europe, major harvesting feasts were more coon before, including when sheep and cows that had been gazing in the outfields in the hills and mountains were taken home to the farm, to be kept indoors over the winter, or slaughtered and used for food, because it was also necessary to keep the number of animals to be fed indoors as low as possible.

For people in the countryside, the church has always played a major role at the harvesting season, not only for giving thanks, but also preparing for a quieter time of prayer and reflection, and for reading religious and other texts, and the children attending the compulsory school. In Norway, for example, we had a special holiday for repentance and prayer, ‘bots- og bededag’, as it was called in Norwegian; the day was removed from the public holiday list in the 1950s, when there were political efforts to make the country more secular in many fields, including changing the emphasis of the church-teachings about how to think about the life hereafter.

In Sweden, and in many places in Finland, there is a beautiful holiday in the autumn called All Saints’ Day, ‘Alla helgons dag’ in Swedish, marked between 31 October and 6 November; this year, the public holiday falls on Friday 1 November. The event is to honour and remember relatives and friends who have passed away. Statistics show that as many as one-third of the Swedes go to the graveyards to place candles and flowers on the graves of their loved ones, sit there and remember those who have ‘crossed over’ and maybe say a quiet prayer, too, and also attend a religious service or another gathering during the weekend. It is indeed a unique thing to do, and, yes, it is being done in what we would otherwise say is a very secular country.

And then to the broader things that we should be thankful for this year, notably the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, reminding us to never forget the crime of dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nihon Hidankyo is a Japanese organisation of a small group of survivors who are still with us, eight decades after the terrible American war actions. Let us be thankful for their tireless work, as their relatives and friends would be, looking down upon us from heaven, realizing that when we get there, they will thank us for honouring their memory and telling everyone, ‘never again’. Till now, the nuclear bomb has not been used again, but alas, there are at least 12,000 such bombs stockpiled in the word, the majority by Russia and USA, with all the NATO countries having access to them in case of need, and several hundred in other countries having nuclear weapons.

Let us hope that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will also be a reminder to us all, indeed the young people, that we need more active peace movements, focusing on reduction of the number of nuclear weapons, active disarmament efforts, and the development of a culture of peace and pacifism. Being thankful to Nihon Hidankyo, and to ICAN, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, and the many old and new national and international peace organizations, let us pray for all good forces to work for peace in more active ways in the years and decades to come. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and elsewhere, should end soon, and must never erupt again. Let us be thankful to all men, women, and youth who remind us of the importance of creating peace in the minds of people, through education and other activities, everywhere at all times. If we can learn not to think of war as an option, then we will finally be on the right track.

I hope that the renewed focus on the reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and overall disarmament, can lead to proactive and broad movements where people and countries everywhere agree never to fight wars again. It would be too good to be true, and it is unrealistic, many would say. Looking back, and looking at the world around us today, it seems impossible. But then, if we proactively work towards achieving it, trying to make the dreams come true, we may indeed succeed. The work must be pragmatic and practical, underlining that rearmament and war are illogical ways of thinking, costly, cruel, and against the foundations of all religions, too. It is God’s will that we do good and help each other, not fight each other. The war concept is outdated and wrong, and in the 21st century, we must indeed begin to do what we all ultimately believe is right.

A major reason for conflicts and wars, within and between countries, and the creation of hordes of refugees and other displaced people, is that we human beings and countries, fight for resources, economic power, and control in selfish ways. Even in our time, we have not learned that sharing and caring is the right thing to do, and the only thing to make us happy – the only way to save our souls and live in God’s image. Let us be thankful for this year’s Noble Peace Prize, making me and many others think about the most important issues of all time, of peace-creation and the development of fairer and more equal societies everywhere. Let us give thanks to those people who help us do this – and let each of us be an instrument in this truly noble work. Nothing else is more important.

Atle Hetland
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from university, diplomacy and development aid. He can be reached at atlehetland@yahoo.com