EDITORIAL
The supermarkets are overflowing with turkeys, high school football teams are preparing to resume their fiercest rivalries, shopping malls are gearing up for their busiest day of the year and the AAA is predicting record-breaking volume on the nation’s trains, planes and roadways over the next few days.
Welcome to Thanksgiving week.
As holidays go, Thanksgiving is unique. For one thing, it’s the only national holiday that always falls on a Thursday. A whole slew of others Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day are always observed on a Monday, while New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and Christmas are celebrated on specific dates.
Every other major American holiday commemorates either a specific event (the start of the new year, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the armistice ending World War I, the birth of Christ), an individual (King, Lincoln, Washington, Columbus) or a group (organized labor). Thanksgiving celebrates an idea sharing the bounty of the harvest that took root when the Pilgrims reluctantly accepted an invitation to break bread with the Massasoit Indians, whom they had heretofore regarded as "savages." (The shared meal evidently did not change their minds, as relations between the two groups quickly reverted to their pre-feast antagonism; what we now think of as the "first" Thanksgiving was, in fact, the only Thanksgiving celebrated by the otherwise hostile cohabitants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.)
If the real story behind its origins is less than inspirational, the modern-day spirit of Thanksgiving is not. Though not a religious holiday, Thanksgiving has an undeniable spiritual quality to it. It is an occasion for us to literally give thanks, not only for the bountiful harvest that fills our dinner table on this particular day but for the many joys that fill our lives all year long. Many of us travel considerable distances over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house to share these joys with extended family and friends in the warmth and comfort of a familiar place.
Two years ago, it was impossible to celebrate Thanksgiving without thinking back just two months, to Sept. 11, and the horrific events that reshaped our world. This year, it’s difficult to celebrate Thanksgiving without thinking about events in Iraq, where American troops find themselves increasingly in harm’s way, and throughout the Middle East, where random acts of terrorism and violence continue unabated.
Closer to home, Thanksgiving always serves to remind us that many of our fellow citizens do not have families with whom to share this holiday, or the warmth and comfort of a home in which to celebrate it. That is why so many thoughtful people volunteer to work in soup kitchens, shelters and hospitals on Thanksgiving Day, and why so many more donate generously at this time of year to the nonprofit organizations that feed the hungry, house the homeless, help the needy and comfort the afflicted.
Thanksgiving is, above all, an intensely personal holiday. Whether we mark the occasion by marching in a parade, watching a football game, volunteering at a social-service agency, sitting at a table piled high with turkey and all the trimmings or resting up for a Black Friday assault on the malls, we should all take a moment or two to think about everything we have to be thankful for. If we do that, we will have celebrated the true meaning of Thanksgiving.