MinneapoliMedia Thanksgiving Blessing 2025: Giving Thanks with Minnesota—and with America

On this Thanksgiving Day, as winter settles gently across our Minnesota landscapes—over frozen lakes, quiet prairies, the glow of Twin Cities neighborhoods, and the warm kitchens where families gather—we pause as a people to breathe in gratitude and exhale hope.

Thanksgiving is more than a date on the calendar. It is a national ritual of remembering. It asks us, each year, to return to the simple truths we too often outrun:
that we need one another,
that our blessings are intertwined,
and that gratitude is not merely felt—it is lived.

Across Minnesota, the heartbeat of this day is everywhere. In the hands that knead dough before dawn. In the elders who carry memories of harder seasons and the young people who carry visions for better ones. In the volunteers ladling soup at shelters from Duluth to Rochester. In families arranging one extra chair for someone who has nowhere else to go. In the strangers who discover, for one quiet moment, that they are no longer strangers.

This is the quiet power of Thanksgiving:
It gathers us—across differences, across distances, across the fractures of a year that has tested us in ways both public and private—and reminds us that we are still a community capable of generosity, grace, and shared humanity.

And yet this day also asks us to be honest.
To acknowledge the land on which we gather, shaped by Dakota and Ojibwe nations.
To honor the stories and struggles of Indigenous people, for whom this day carries a weight of remembrance and truth.
To recognize that gratitude without reflection is incomplete—and reflection without action is hollow.

So this year, let our Thanksgiving be wide enough to hold both gratitude and truth.
Let it celebrate abundance while remembering those who face hunger.
Let it honor tradition while making room for justice.
Let it bless the tables we know—and the ones we must still build.

Across Minnesota and across the United States, the challenges of our moment are real: economic strain, social division, political violence, and the lingering shadows of loss. But even in this uncertain chapter of our national story, something enduring remains: a stubborn belief that we can be better than we were yesterday. That empathy still matters. That community is still possible. That hope, once shared, can ripple outward.

Today, may every Minnesotan—and every American—find a place of warmth, a moment of peace, and a reason to give thanks.

May we remember the people who helped carry us this far, and recommit ourselves to carrying others in the days ahead.

May we speak gratitude not only at the table but in the way we treat one another long after the dishes are put away.

And may the blessings of this day remind us of the deepest truth about this country we share:
that our strength is not built on what divides us, but on what we choose to hold in common.

From all of us at MinneapoliMedia, we send you love, light, and unity on this Thanksgiving Day.
May your homes be full, your hearts be steady, and your hope be renewed.

Happy Thanksgiving, Minnesota.
Happy Thanksgiving, America.

MinneapoliMedia