For Thanksgiving, my folks had a weenie roast.

It was a grand buffet on top of a plastic picnic table: Oscar Mayer weenies, Johnsonville cheddar brats, and Conecuh sausage (precooked inside an air fryer so 1) we could go ahead and start snacking on it and 2) so we would greatly reduce the chances of throwing up our guts after a wretched case of food poisoning due to consuming uncooked Conecuh sausage. Could you imagine what it would be like to get sick on that most delicious of meats and then be unable to enjoy it for a blue moon? We must reduce that risk at all cost).

Subsequently, this Thanksgiving was the most fun we’ve had in a good long while at a family dinner. We kept it simple. The great outdoors was our host. No one had to clean house or decorate so as to grace the cover of Southern Living.

You’d just have to know my people to understand that we are at home inside a house or out in the pasture, eating the traditional turkey for Thanksgiving or, the old fallback if no one really wants to cook:

A FROZEN STOUFFER’S LASAGNA

Lasagna has filled us for all the holidays except for the Fourth of July. We dare not desecrate the birthday of our nation by eating anything other than grilled meats slathered with barbecue sauce. But all the other holidays are open season for lasagna. We buy the party size on special at the local Gateway and keep them in the freezer until occasion calls. Lasagna is something all the kids in the family will eat, except for one who has had it so much that she’s gone on strike. She was going through her baby book not long ago and saw a photograph of herself, chubby cheeks smeared with tomato sauce, and declared, “Man y’all, you even had it at my first birthday. No wonder I can’t stand it now.”

But the purpose of lasagna is to keep things simple. The purpose of the weenies was just the same, and to take the party outside where the elder folks would be more comfortable. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had a family get together at all.

It’s okay to keep things simple. A common post on social media lately emphasizes the simplicity of the first Christmas. They didn’t have turkey, lasagna, or even weenies.

It’s okay to keep it simple now.  

And this year, of all years, has taught us to boil things down to the necessities:

It doesn’t matter how we celebrate, as long as we can be together.

It doesn’t matter what we eat, as long as we give thanks to God for providing it.

I am reminded of Paul writing to the Philippians, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (4:11-12). Those verses precede one of the most popular verses in the Bible: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

But it’s not about how much you can take. It’s not about maxing out your reps or being your best self.

It’s about being content no matter what you have to endure in this sometimes very trying life. It’s about depending upon Christ to walk with you during the good times and the bad.

Contentment is found in Christ.

My family sat around the fire and talked, and laughed, and then watched the embers and flames in silence. Before we put out the fire, a log fell across another to make the shape of the Cross.

Coincidence? Say so if you want to, but the timing was so perfect with everything else we had done that evening that I can’t help but take it as a reminder from God that it all begins and ends with Him. He is with us, start to finish.

He isn’t fancy.

He isn’t demanding.

He doesn’t require a clean house or lasagna or even weenies.

He is with us.

And that is enough.