EDITORIAL: As divided and as stressed as we are, we do have much to be thankful for
As divided and as stressed as we are, we do have much to be thankful for
It’s one of history’s greatest ironies that a holiday that we’ve come to associate with belt-loosening and piling the plate high with victuals was kicked into gear by grim ascetics who didn’t like Christmas.
The Pilgrims who feasted on deer, leeks, parsnips and shellfish – alas, no mashed potatoes or gravy – with about 90 members of the Wampanoag Indian tribe in Massachusetts in 1621 were not given to frivolity or self-indulgence, to the extent that they prohibited celebrations of either Christmas or Easter.
It wasn’t until 1863 that Thanksgiving became a national holiday, though it had been celebrated in many American states. Sarah Josepha Hale, best-known as the creator of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” happily reminisced about the New Hampshire Thanksgiving celebrations she grew up with in the journal Godey’s Lady Book, and theorized that a national Thanksgiving celebration would be a way to mend a nation ripped apart by the Civil War.
Hale wrote, “Would it not be of great advantage, socially, nationally (and) religiously to have the day of American Thanksgiving positively settled? Putting aside the sectional feelings and local incidents that might be urged by any single state or isolated territory that desired to choose its own time, would it not be more noble, more truly American, to become nationally in unity when we affirm to God our tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year?”
We obviously are not in the midst of a Civil War right now. Nor are we like those Americans who celebrated Thanksgiving 80 years ago, at the end of 1944, when thousands of American families were confronted with an empty seat at the dinner table because their sons, uncles, brothers or fathers were killed in battle in the midst of World War II. That Thanksgiving, President Franklin Roosevelt said in a proclamation that the country should mark the holiday “by bending every effort to hasten the day of final victory…”
Clearly, we can be glad that no Americans are dying this Thanksgiving in large numbers in far-flung corners of the world. But, as the most recent election has shown, we remain a people well and thoroughly divided along lines of race, education, income, religious beliefs and a whole host of other factors. Any sort of national consensus on much of anything seems an elusive prospect.
And even amid low unemployment and a generally strong economy, the most recent election demonstrated that many Americans have nagging worries over the price tag that has come to be attached to necessities like homes, cars, groceries and child care. The weight of monthly bills will mean some families will have to have a more scaled-back Thanksgiving this year, and perhaps a less generous Christmas.
Still, we have quite a bit to be thankful for. The Pilgrims and Indians who celebrated that first Thanksgiving 400 years ago would not recognize the lives of abundance and convenience that we lead. Food is readily and easily available – in fact, so available that a large share of Americans struggle with being overweight – and we can be comfortable in the cold-weather months in homes that are reliably heated. Our lives are immeasurably easier and much longer, and advances in health care allow us to spend the years we have with greater vigor. We possess greater levels of education, much more mobility and more opportunity to pursue our own paths in life.
Yes, the lives we have can be filled with stress, disappointment and discord. But we need to remember – and be thankful – that we are leading better lives today than most of the human beings who have ever walked on this planet.