Among my growing list of improper uses of the English language is the response I get when telling a restaurant server or anyone else “thank you.” The usual response has been for as long as I remember, “you’re welcome.” For the young, especially, it has become “no problem.”

Why would thanking someone for a service or kindness performed be considered a problem?

Thanksgiving, which mythically began when the Pilgrims and early settlers thanked God for his “many blessings,” despite their difficult circumstances, is now a small bump in the road on the way to the annual conspicuous consumption called Christmas.

The airlines are thankful because of heavy travel that leads to large profits. Thanksgiving, as well as approaching Christmas, have lost their unique status and have now been blended into “the holidays.” That’s a problem.

There once was a time — and I still remember it — when most of the Christmas rush began after Thanksgiving. Now we have Black Friday beginning in some TV ads before Halloween. Thanksgiving has taken a back seat to Christmas commercialism.

While the early settlers and Pilgrims were known for thanking God for his blessings, it wasn’t until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday. In his proclamation declaring the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving, Lincoln said this about the blessings Americans had received: “To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

The proclamation was issued after the Battle of Gettysburg. If a nation in the midst of such a great internal struggle could find things to be thankful for, what about us?

Something even more profound came later in the proclamation. Speaking to his fellow citizens, Lincoln wrote: “I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.”

When was the last time you heard a national leader recommend penitence?

The scriptures are clear … nothing gets God’s attention quite like repentance. It is then His mercy flows. When he first ran for president in 2016, I asked Donald Trump if he had ever felt the need to ask for forgiveness, or repent. He said “No. Perhaps someday I will.”

God once said for the sake of 10 righteous people he would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Like the people in those ancient cities, we have many sins for which we should repent. I’m not exactly sure how God will respond as his people pray — seeking his forgiveness for our national sins. But I do know that it is an appropriate attitude and a long-standing tradition to reintroduce.

Perhaps a heaping serving of humble pie should be a part of the Thanksgiving menu.