If there is any national holiday that is routinely overlooked, it is Thanksgiving. In our intensely consumer-driven society, Christmas looms ever greater, bringing with it the pseudo-holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Each year, the jingles of commercialism threaten to drown out the message of gratitude which Thanksgiving celebrates.
So with that in mind, I intend to keep a proper Thanksgiving this year, and every year. It is a time for food, a time for family, and above all else a time to ponder on all the good things in our lives, and to give thanks for them.
According to tradition, the first Thanksgiving feast was made by the pilgrims in 1621, after their first good harvest in the New World. They had come to America seeking religious freedom, which had been denied them in Europe. Instead, they found a foreboding wilderness whose native inhabitants had been all but wiped out by the plague. There were no hospitals, no grocery stores, no internet—no one except an English-speaking indian named Squanto to help them, and no way to send for help across the wide, dark Atlantic.
It was a struggle just to survive. Many of them died. Those who lived saw the hand of Providence in their survival, and after a bounteous harvest ensured that they would have food for the winter, they dedicated a feast to acknowledging that Providence that had saved them.
In a lot of ways, the pilgrims are to America what the pioneers are to the Mormons. And interestingly enough, I have direct ancestors among the pilgrims as well as the Mormon pioneers. So for me, it’s more than just a nice story: it’s a part of my family history that makes me who I am. And I suspect the same is true for many other readers of this blog.
So in the spirit of that first Thanksgiving feast, here are the things that I am especially thankful for this year:
- I am thankful for my near and extended family. Tolstoy was wrong when he said that all happy families are alike: every family has their own quirks, even the ones that hold together. I wouldn’t give up my family’s quirks for anything.
- I am thankful to live in a free country, where my rights to life, liberty, and property are respected and honored. I am also thankful for the brave men and women of our armed forces who sacrifice so much to keep it free.
- I am thankful for the opportunity to pursue a career as an author, and for the flexibility and control that indie publishing provides. I have no one but myself to blame for my failures, but my successes are all my own. Even after four years, it’s still exhilarating.
- I am thankful for my readers, who have made and continue to make this publishing journey possible. I am thankful for all that they do that supports me, from buying and reading my books to sharing with friends, posting reviews, sending me fan mail, and connecting in a hundred other little ways that together make this whole thing worthwhile. Seriously, you guys are awesome. The only thing I could ask is to have more of you!
Thanksgiving is one of the Big Three–Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and more people apparently celebrate Thanksgiving than Independence Day–I’d hesitate before calling that “overlooked.” Enough people travel to be with large family gatherings that it is one of the top ten busiest travel weekends in the year. In addition it might be good to bear in mind that people who cook for their families for Thanksgiving probably started planning the week before. This doesn’t seem to me to be consistent with Thanksgiving being “most overlooked.”
By all means let’s make time for food and family and pondering the good things in our lives. Gratitude is good for all of us. Perhaps we could start by considering the efforts our family and friends and people across the US have made to join us in celebrating this holiday.
2) Actually the Pilgrims found religious freedom in Europe, albeit at the cost of settling in the Netherlands. They found their kids were learning Dutch and picking up Dutch habits, which bothered the grownups who were having a hard time making that adjustment, and *that* was why they moved to a new continent.
3) I think I prefer the formulation in the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I’m not sure at what point this morphed into “life liberty and property” but associating that with the founding fathers always makes me think of my neighbors, who would have been “property” in those days. Which does not make me think better of either the founding fathers or property rights, so I stick to “pursuit of happiness” which I also consider more historically accurate.
“Life, liberty, and property” comes from Locke and actually predates the constitution.
I use the word “overlooked” deliberately, not because we don’t seem to celebrate Thanksgiving anymore, but because the meaning of the holiday seems to be getting lost. This year, I saw far more mentions of Black Friday in the days leading up to Thanksgiving than I did any mention of Thanksgiving itself, and in terms of meaning the two are diametrically opposed. And then there was the whole “Thanksgetting” ad campaign, which was just disgusting.
I’m sure the pilgrims could have found religious freedom in places other than the new world, but it was still the main motivator for them to sacrifice their comforts and come here. Saying it doesn’t count because they had it in the Netherlands is like saying the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery because the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free any of the slaves in the states loyal to the union.