Our Ways of Saying Grace

Y’all know the standards by heart —“the hands that prepared it” and such — but we wanted to know what the Southern Thanksgiving blessing sounds like today, when family dinners assemble people of all faiths and none. Turns out, it sounds like every one of us.

Story by Anne Byrn | Illustrations by Courtney Garvin

Americans first celebrated Thanksgiving on December 18, 1777, after the Continental Army’s victory at Saratoga, New York. In 1796, founding father Samuel Adams, then the governor of Massachusetts, proclaimed the holiday in his state, so “the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor.”

But Thanksgiving as we know it, feted on the fourth Thursday of November, would take nearly a century longer to materialize. Its godmother was Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady Book, a magazine of cultural topics, recipes, and fashion for women of both North and South. Hale sought to bring the Civil War-torn country together and envisioned two great American festivals — Independence Day on July 4 and Thanksgiving Day in November. She petitioned President Abraham Lincoln so many times for a Thanksgiving holiday he finally proclaimed it in 1863.

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

—Abraham Lincoln, 1863

Thus, one can’t talk Thanksgiving without talking about religion. We were a country founded on the principle of religious freedom, and it’s undeniable religion has shaped the culture of America and its citizens. In the rural and often isolated South of the past, this was certainly true. Families attended the same worship services and shared a meal together afterward, on the church grounds or at home.

“Family life often revolved around the kitchen and the dining table,” writes the late John Egerton in his 1993 landmark book, Southern Food. “Prayers were said at the table, important decisions were made there, and the principle of family unity was repeatedly reinforced there. Holidays brought command performances by sons and daughters who had moved away.”

The word “blessing” comes from the act of blessing food — literally, to make it holy — before we eat. People “say grace” or “give thanks” depending on where they were raised. And that is our concept of the Southern table blessing. Those blessings might mention the bounty of the food, and sometimes the farm that raised it. A grandmother recently departed. Maybe just the bread, a much-anticipated pecan pie, or “the hands that made it.” They might be thanks for those who traveled for the meal and those not present this year. Or a call to values like stewardship, kindness, and gratitude. 

But do those blessings fit the South of today, a region of myriad faiths and peoples, older and younger generations, and more diversity?

When you start asking that question, you learn about more than faith traditions; you learn culture.

A retired Episcopal priest in my hometown of Nashville, Gene Manning, told me blessings are oral poetry.

“They come out of who we are, what’s in our hearts,” she says.

Marcie Cohen Ferris, professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, echoed this sentiment. She was raised in a Jewish family in Arkansas and now does not consider herself religious, but she celebrates the blessing’s storytelling and ritual. 

“Blessings are a way to verbalize gratitude and, like the power of song, create solidarity within the group and say, something different is happening here,” she says.

Her husband Dr. William “Bill” Ferris, the noted author, Southern folklorist and cultural expert, dives a bit deeper.

“Blessings are an important part of our culture, especially at holidays, when you have family and friends gathered who are normally not together,” Ferris says. “They allow us to cherish each other’s lives and feel blessed when we are all at the table together.”

Bill Ferris grew up on a farm in Warren County, Mississippi, near Vicksburg, with a large extended family. 

“One of my grandmothers was very religious, and the other wasn’t religious at all,” he says. “But they both had a blessing at Thanksgiving and Christmas, after a wedding, whenever people were gathered at the table. During the holidays, we had family from all over the country and overseas who might be there — and their friends — so there might be 30 people at a meal: Jewish, Christian, Muslim. We often embroidered my grandmother’s short blessing by acknowledging people who were no longer with us. The blessing is an important ritual in the South, a way of bonding into a circle with a group of family and friends over food and drink. It pulls everyone together in a thoughtful way.”

Rabbi Saul Strosberg of Congregation Sherith Israel in Nashville, was raised in a large Jewish family in Schenectady, New York. He believes “eating is a holy act that we put effort into and have gratitude for.”

“Many say blessings before a meal, thanking God, but the true gratitude logically should come afterwards, when you are best able, when you feel the effects and have tasted the food,” Rabbi Strosberg told me. “It’s a lot like a birthday present. You can say thanks before you open it up, but the best thank you comes after you know what’s inside.”

Rabbi Strosberg admits it’s challenging to get everyone to linger at the table after the meal, when many want to run off to watch the football game. But these words of grace, said in Hebrew, are simple and symbolic. They haven’t been changed or altered in thousands of years. They are profound and a part of the fabric of his life, his family’s life, the Jewish life.

“Grace says that God created the world and provides food for everyone,” Rabbi Strosberg says, “but it’s a real challenge today for us to say it, because even though you are full and feeling well, you know not everyone in the world is full and feels the same.”

It is this deeper meaning that makes prayers before and after a meal so appealing to Amin Tomeh, an American Muslim born in Damascus, Syria, who has lived in the United States since 1986 and is an engineering consultant in Atlanta.

Blessings “reconnect Muslims to what it is all about — that humanity is indivisible and wholly reliant on God,” Tomeh told me. “As you consume, you are nourished, and you are connected to your fellow human beings. Muhammad says none of you are believers if your neighbors go hungry. We are responsible for making sure that those who are in earshot of us, our circle of acquaintances, are fed.”

Blessings also remind Tomeh that God provided what he is about to consume. 

“Even if you paid for the food at the supermarket or grew it in your backyard garden, it is God who really provided the nourishment,” he says. “Thus, it’s Tomeh’s responsibility to be a good steward and not be wasteful when eating.

 “We believe the stomach is divided into three parts — one for food, one for drink, one for air or breathing,” he says. “The idea is to never have your fill. Leave one third empty, so your body won’t be overwhelmed, and so others can eat. We say, if there is enough food for two people, then there is enough for four.”

The Hindu religion and its blessings go one step further, not only calling on stewardship to others, but also to the world. Priest Pavan Kumar Kristapati of the Hindu Temple of Atlanta says Hindu blessings recognize the presence of God in the food. And before the meal is over, tiny pieces of food are taken from the plate and kept outside the plate to offer the food to all living beings, so even the ants don’t go hungry.

Through her mission work at Grace Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, the Rev. Cathy Caldwell Hoop knows all too well the deep connection between food, prayer, and hunger — and thus turns the table blessing into daily action. Her church launched a food-pantry ministry that serves 500 underfed families a month. They buy food through the West Alabama Food Bank and receive food donations to share with the needy.

“What we are hoping to do is apply for a grant to create a market-style pantry where people can come in and shop and choose foods that appeal to them,” Rev. Hoop says. “We are hoping to purchase a piece of land alongside our parking lot to begin community gardening, offering fresh foods because we don’t have refrigeration.” 

Rev. Hoop and her congregation hope their work can help people of rural Alabama who live in “food deserts,” defined by the lack of a walking-distance supermarket in a neighborhood, or “food swamps,” neighborhoods served only by quick-stop markets that offer only unhealthy foods.

Gene Manning can remember her 1950s family meals in Chattanooga. 

“Even my father, who didn’t go to church, had one of us say the blessing. If you lived in the South, you said a blessing,” she says. Manning says the blessing is  “speaking gratitude to God for what is before us.” And she worries, with some sadness, that it might be going away. With more meals outside the home, more time away from the family dinner table, fewer words of gratitude are said. 

But deeper truths about the modern Southern table blessing emerge when you talk to a wide circle of Southerners.

Tariq Abdul-Haqq is emblematic of the changing South. He was born to a Catholic mother in Tampa but raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church of his father. And his youth was spent at the table, waiting for the blessing to end any time the minister visited for a meal. 

“We would pray 10 minutes or longer before we could eat,” Abdul-Haqq says. “My brother and I would bow our heads and give each other shifty looks. We were hungry!

“When I became Muslim, I was excited that we didn’t have to pray like that,” he says with a laugh. “Islamic prayers are shorter. My daughters are taught to memorize short prayers, and then we eat. But the difference is that we pray without ceasing. In Islam, it is mandatory to pray five times a day. All is done in Arabic. We eat the food, and once finished, we thank God.”

Abdul-Haqq spent his college years in North Carolina, and lived in Connecticut and New Jersey before settling in Atlanta, where he had a career in corporate sales and marketing. But now he’s a full-time grad student pursuing a divinity degree in Islamic chaplaincy. 

Without a doubt, he says, the South is a comfortable place for a Muslim to say a blessing, because the blessing is part of the culture. 

Rabbi Strosberg agrees. He grew up in New England, and his wife in Chicago, but their years in the South have left them believing our region, to put it simply, is particularly prayerful. 

“When we dine with non-Jewish friends who say blessings, the practice is around us, and we are in the culture of the South that thanks God for food,” Rabbi Strosberg says. “It strengthens our resolve.”

Doubtless, religion has put up fences in the South. But all these perspectives on the blessing do make one wonder if new kinds of Southern blessings might draw us together. Could the poetry and diverse beauty of all these blessings — spoken by a child, a parent, a stranger, a faith leader — cross the barriers of belief?  Could they be an opportunity for greater inclusion? 

Rev. Hoop at Alabama’s Grace Presbyterian likes to think so. She did not become an ordained minister until age 50, and she now leads a church whose vision of the South is inclusive. 

“Our church is more progressive. We are a racial, gender, and economic mix,” says Rev. Hoop, who grew up in Memphis. “We use expansive language when it comes to God and inclusive language when it comes to people.”

Which is unlike much of the Deep South, she acknowledges, where affiliation and religion can feel alienating. 

“The question always is, ‘Where do you go to church?’” she says. She says she sees people saying prayers in restaurants in Alabama, thus never feels inhibited about praying in public herself, even if her prayers differ from those of others.

When Tariq Abdul-Haqq returns to his family home and its Christian traditions, he, too, asks for inclusivity at the table. 

“I usually bow my head respectfully during the blessing,”  he says. “And if they ask me, I will say a prayer. I will say something that is acceptable to them. I am mindful of their feelings.”

“Gracious God, watch over us,
and bless us as we eat.
Bless this food, the bounty of the earth.
Bless the hands that have picked and prepared it.
Bless the friendship that we will share this evening.
As we thank you, so may it be.” 

— Dean Timothy Kimbrough, Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville

Timothy Kimbrough adapted that ecumenical prayer, he says, because while his prayers have a deep connection to the biblical scripture,  he doesn’t want them to alienate others. In situations where people of mixed faiths are present, he prays to God, the bounty of the earth, and friendship.

Soumaya Khalifa, director of the Atlanta Islamic Speakers Bureau, knows all too well that discomfort can come from saying a blessing. She recalls saying a blessing at an interfaith lunch meeting in Atlanta many years back. 

“There were clergy from different faith traditions,” Khalifa says. “They all put their heads down for the blessing. I said, ‘In the name of God most gracious, most merciful,’ and I was done with the blessing. Everyone’s heads were still down. So I said, ‘I am done with the blessing.’” She realized later they were waiting for her to say  “amen.”

What is it about a blessing that creates such trepidation? Is it a fear of public speaking — or of speaking from the heart? Is it a fear of inadequacy? Do we sound too religious? Not religious enough? And do we need to be religious to say a blessing? 

Bill Ferris believes blessings in the South are more about family and the way they communicate a family’s story and traditions than they are about religion. 

When I think back to my daughter’s earliest blessing in front of family, I am proud of her assurance, even if the blessing was short and childlike. My husband has asked why he is always the one my family calls on to say the blessing at holiday dinners, when so many others are capable. I tell him they like his blessings, but the secret may be that he is real and genuine and talks to God. The blessing isn’t about him. It’s a conversation he is having, and we are all listening to it.

Psychology Today reports that when blessings or prayers are said aloud, we feel a conflict between competence and warmth. We might feel that we are incompetent to say such important words, and thus have a hesitation to say the blessing. But studies show when people hear you say a blessing, they are more affected by the warmth of your delivery than by your actual words.

Kendall Vanderslice, an author and baker in Durham, says the table itself is what gets people comfortable enough to say blessings and be grateful. Her recent book, We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God, comes from her visits around the country to “dinner churches,” assemblies that meet only around the table. Her takeaway? In spite of our differences and our inadequacies, we all bond at the table in the hope of building community. 

“There is incredible intimacy when we eat together,” Vanderslice says. “I know it is complicated and uncomfortable sometimes at Thanksgiving, but when people commit themselves to awkwardness and discomfort, that becomes the space for relationships.” Those relationships, she argues, could be an answer for the incredible loneliness felt by too many in the modern world. All people, she says, have food in common.

“Everyone shares this need to eat. And every time we eat, we recognize our reliance on something other than ourselves,” she says. “It allows us, simply, to be vulnerable.”

Which, at the end of the day, is what any blessing should allow.

The late Leah Chase, owner of Dooky Chase Restaurant in New Orleans, fed politicians, civil rights leaders, protestors, activists, and preachers, and she knew the secret to their getting along was her fried chicken and gumbo z’herbes. Put those people at the table together, and even if they had different ideologies and agendas, they were all hungry, she said. Her food upset the divisions that kept them apart.

“Food is the most bonding part of our lives,” says Bill Ferris. “When you have a holiday meal and open it with a blessing, that moment has particular importance from childhood on.”

The lesson is gratitude — and the power in verbalizing it. Rabbi Strosberg finds grateful people are generally happier people. 

“They are the ones smiling because they’re thankful,” he says.

But Gene Manning worries gratitude is being ignored. 

“Part of the struggle right now is that gratitude has gotten pushed under the carpet in our society,” she says. “We forget the little things to be grateful for. That’s what a blessing is for. Small things like a meal that sustain us day by day.”

In the end, I asked a North Carolinian named Naomi Tutu, who was raised in South Africa, always saying a blessing at the table. The daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu is now a priest at the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, and she raised her own children to say blessings. And while they often said light-hearted blessings, what mattered to her was the message. 

“It is always about gratitude for what we have and asking God to remind us all the ways to help those who do without,” Tutu says, “and call us to be those who work, so all people will be fed.”

Whether she is welcoming friends in North Carolina or singing grace in Xhosa in South Africa, Tutu exhibits hospitality and includes everyone at the table. 

“Food and the table are a welcoming space. Food has historically been a symbol of acceptance and welcome. I think, when we are able to share a meal and a blessing, it is about opening up our hearts to those we invite to join us or those who ask us to join them.”

Amen.

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