Thanksgiving Playbook, Episode 4: Closing Time

Closing time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
Closing time, turn all of the lights on
Over every boy and every girl

Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So, finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don't have to go home
But you can't stay here

Closing time, time for you to go out
To the places you will be from
Closing time, this room won't be open
Till your brothers or your sisters come

So, gather up your jackets, move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend
Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end, yeah

In 1998 the hit song “Closing Time” by Semisonic hit the charts (90’s music videos nostalgia, anyone?). It was inspired by the last call at the bar the band frequented where the bartender would yell loudly, “You don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here!” The band wanted a new song to close their shows with and this one, for obvious reasons, stuck.

As we close this Thanksgiving Playbook series, we would be remiss if we failed to talk about endings. The hard truth of life is that everything comes to an end and learning to end well—to consider the close—is part of what makes an intentional gathering, well, intentional.

Endings can be tricky. Some of us linger on and on, willing to extend our goodbyes far into the night, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the host is wrapping their blanket around them and brushing their teeth. Others prefer the Irish goodbye.

Priya Parker has a whole chapter on endings in The Art of Gathering. “Accepting the impermanence of a gathering is part of the art,” she says. “A gathering is a moment of time that has the potential to alter many other moments in time. And for it to have the best chance of doing so, engaging in some kind of meaning-making at the end is crucial.”

We can cultivate the kind of closing that gives our gatherings the chance of enduring in people’s hearts.

Jamin loves to make individualized turkey pot pies to send home with everyone. Included in each box is a printed copy of the liturgy “For Leavings.” This allows everyone to leave with something in hand, not just to remember their time together but to have something to look forward to afterwards.

The liturgy “For Leavings” encourages us all to reflect on our time together, on the holy significance of the moment and releases us to move on, knowing that in some ways—both known and mysterious—we have been shaped and changed by our gathering.

O Lord, make us ever mindful of one another
unto the end that we would labor in the
days to come as those who would tend and
encourage the stories of those around us by
prayer and friendship and thoughtfulness and
conversation, affirming and sharpening and
amplifying one another’s good works, unto the
end that your body would be built up, and that
your kingdom would be more fully realized in this world.

Thank you, O God,
for the mercy and the beauty
incarnated in the word and acts of these
your people, extended toward another.
It is no accident that we were born in the same
epoch, and that our stories have twined in this
time and in this place.

O Spirit of God, be as present in our parting
as you were in our gathering.

—Excerpt from “For Leavings” by Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy Vol. I