Thanksgiving is the time to give thanks and San Francisco, the City by the Bay has special activities that give heartfelt meaning to this holiday. And to make your Thanksgiving travel feel even more worthwhile, you and your family could take the time to make someone else feel special on the day of thanks…
Glide Memorial Church in the city’s Tenderloin District has celebrated a Thanksgiving holiday tradition for more than thirty years. It is a tradition of servicing Thanksgiving dinner thousands of homeless, handicapped, underprivileged, and impoverished from San Francisco and across the Bay Area. Glide Church is particularly suited for this massive outreach program to feed those in need, as its mission statement makes clear, “ . . . to create a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization.”
In a city like San Francisco, where diversity is celebrated, Glide stands out because it embraces those who are not part of the traditional mainstream including gays, lesbians and transgender individuals.
Pastor Cecil Williams is renowned worldwide for his controversial positions that often go against the grain of churchmen in other, more conservative cities. Pastor Williams was one of the first ministers to perform same-sex marriages even though the United Methodist Church did not sanction this practice. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Council on Religion & Homosexuality in 1964, long before gay rights were on any political agenda.
Glide’s outreach in preparation of the annual Thanksgiving feast is a yearlong affair with the church collecting contributions from businesses and individuals to cover the cost of the more than 5000 meals that are served. Dozens of volunteers from every walk of life are recruited to work the kitchen and man the serving line. Volunteers gather to chop, dice, mix and slice and prepare hundreds of turkeys with stuffing and all the trimmings in a feast that is fit for a king!
The lineup of guests begins in earnest the night before Thanksgiving with the queue of the needy stretching around the block from the entrance of Glide’s Tenderloin address. The Glide Memorial Church Thanksgiving Feast is an annual event that serves the disadvantaged in a tangible way and represents the best spirit of the holiday.
Where: Glide Memorial Church, 330 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94102.
When: Thanksgiving Day.
For more information and or to make a donation or volunteer: (info@glide.org), (415-674-6000).
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