So, the history of Thanksgiving is, as we all know, fraught. The sanitized version of happy Pilgrims and Indians joining together whitewashes a multitude of sins. As schoolchildren make hand-trace turkeys, no one mentions that Squanto, one of the primary characters in the told-and-re-told story, was actually a Wampanoag man named Tisquantum, who had been kidnaped, sold into slavery in Spain, and returned to North America, all before the Mayflower arrived. It is troublesome, to say the least.
For many years,Thanksgiving in the U.S. was only spottily observed, mostly in New England, with loads of different traditions, including the trick-or-treat like custom of "ragamuffins" going door-ro-door to ask for food. It wasn't until Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, acceded to a request to establish a national holiday. To officially recognize a day of Thanksgiving in the midst of a great national struggle seems bold, to say the least, and for me resonates with the current national mood.
Here, check out this excerpt from Lincoln's proclamation:
I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
Today I am mindful of and grateful for all the good things, material and otherwise, that comprise my life, but I offer thanks in the context of the current national perverseness and civil strife, and hope that the restoration of harmony and tranquility comes soon.
Let's give thanks for what have and keep working for what we need.
Happy Thanksgiving.
