11 Thanksgivings Ago Today: Thanksgiving what-if

I didn’t take this photo;
we didn’t have any
green beans or tomatoes

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Nov. 27, 2009.]

All day yesterday, even as I was enjoying our company for Thanksgiving, enjoying the bright afternoon (after a foggy morning), enjoying the turkey, the candied sweet potatoes, the Brussels sprouts and carrots, the fruit salad, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the Vouvray, and the whipped-cream-topped pumpkin pie, I was bothered by something just not quite right about Thanksgiving.
    What could it be? It’s a good holiday, a day off from work (for many people, though by no means all). Most families that are able to, get a few of their members or some other relatives or some friends together for an unusually plentiful table and the pleasure of convivial feasting.
    It’s a solid tradition in America; perhaps no ritual is more “American.” The fact that Thanksgiving is a ritual was emphasized to me in the afternoon. We went walking after dinner, my wife and I, our two guests (a friend and her little boy), and our poodle Siegfried, and I asked a woman also out walking (by herself) whether she’d had dinner yet.
    “Oh, no,” she said, “we had Thanksgiving on Sunday.”
    She and her lot had already done the ritual, which didn’t even have to be performed on the official National Day of Thanksgiving.
    And, of course, there’s the ritual of a Presidential Pardon for that lone turkey, who doesn’t know to be glad not to know that millions of his brethren weren’t so lucky.
    By the way, according to Gail Collins, in her op-ed piece, “A Tale of Two Turkeys,” yesterday in The New York Times, the turkey pardon “only goes back to George (the Good One) Bush and 1989.” That particular ritual isn’t so solid that President Obama couldn’t have just skipped it and restored a bit of gravitas to the Office. Pity that he didn’t.
    [Or, as Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman wrote on Nov. 23 this year about another president: “He preferred the parts of the job that combined pomp, splendor and a world amenable to his decisions. In other words, he always seemed to genuinely enjoy pardoning turkeys” (“What Donald Trump Liked About Being President”).]

Over night, as I lay sleepless at times from a stomach suffering from the unwonted plenty (or possibly just the wine), I think I figured out what bothers me about Thanksgiving. And a comment from my wife at breakfast this morning captured it synecdochially.
    She tapped a picture on the front page of one of our local newspapers. “Look at this,” she said, “those poor people having Thanksgiving dinner off tiny paper plates.”
    The caption says:

...eat Thanksgiving lunch Thursday at First Baptist Church in Mebane. More than 200 people visited First Baptist for the annual holiday meal.

    According to an article in The Washington Post on November 17:

a new federal report...shows that nearly 50 million people – including almost one child in four – struggled last year to get enough to eat.

What if We the People (the powers that – through our elected representatives – be in this country) were to abolish Thanksgiving and establish a program for ending unnecessary hunger in the United States?
    Surely We (and our elected representatives) are resourceful enough to come up with a program that wouldn’t be too liberal, or too conservative, or too Christian, or too Jewish, or too Muslim, or too secular for a majority to buy into.
    Under such a program, every day would be a day of thanksgiving. We’d no longer limit ourselves to just the one, official national day for those hungry millions not to go hungry because a local church provides some turkey and stuffing on a small paper plate.
    What if?
_______________
On Sunday, November 29, 2009, my grand nephew Joe recommended an improvement to the project:

Not following the logic on getting rid of Thanksgiving and starting the program. Seems like [you’re saying that] a program to feed the hungry and a day set aside to get together with family are mutually exclusive. In fact, a double bonus would be to start the program to feed the hungry and then as a family on Thanksgiving, set aside some time to help some people in need. Not that Thanksgiving should be the only day we should help others.

    I responded:

Hey, Joe, thanks. The “logic” was more the psychologic of my musing. Of course the issues aren’t otherwise linked, except for the possible hypocrisy of many people’s seeming to think that all is absolved by one day a year’s being set aside to “feed the poor.” This would not have pleased Jesus.
    I was also thinking it might be like the similar hypocrisy of Christmas, when some people solemnly intone, “Peace on earth,” while maybe doing next to nothing all the rest of the year to reduce strife. This would not have pleased Jesus either.
    And, of course, you’re right. Every day should be a day for helping others. Which was the main point of my post.

Copyright © 2009, 2020 by Moristotle