“They don’t make Thanksgivings like they used to,” Ol’ Curdlepuss moaned the other day. “Back when I was growing up it was pretty good, but not so much anymore. It isn’t the way it used to be.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond but sailed straight into his list of complaints: The ‘pretty good’ of today isn’t nearly as good as it was back when his mother spent the better part of the day cooking in the kitchen. Later she did all the clean-ups. Everything costs more. The parades are terrible now, at least compared back to when he was young and there were more of them. “Macy’s, now they had a big one back then. Wannamaker in Philly, that was a good one. And Detroit had the big Hudson’s parade; so did Marshal Field’s in Chicago. And they didn’t have all of these no-name and no-talent singers on some float lip-synching like they were Milli-Vanilli or something.”
The old boy had to go way back in the recesses of his mind to remember that failed musical duet. However, he was right about just one thing: they don’t make Thanksgiving Day like it used to be. That might be a good thing. That is because the significance of the holiday is enduring, but we constantly tinker with how we celebrate it.
Perhaps you have seen the painting of a small group of Puritans trudging through the white and drifting snow to their meeting house on Thanksgiving morning. The men were carrying their blunderbusses with them, which led Will Rogers to quip they did it to make sure they got what they were praying for. The day started out with a long prayer, followed by a two-hour sermon, and another hour-long prayer. At half time, they took a break for lunch, and in the afternoon endured another long-winded sermon and prayer. The churches were not insulated, there were no windows, and the only warmth came from small charcoal heaters in the pews.
I doubt that will go over today. After about fifteen minutes in the pulpit I’d get worried some blunderbuss toting parishioner would think he would be thankful when it is over, and then point the business end of his gun in my direction to get what he asked for. I’m thankful we dropped that tradition of long sermons.
A few decades ago, I came across an ancient book that contained some of the early colonial-era Thanksgiving sermons. They were the perfect cure for insomnia. No wonder the book hadn’t been checked out of the library since Harding was in the White House.
Thanksgiving Day isn’t what it used to be because it keeps changing as our personal or common life changes. George Washington was the first President to declare a National Day of Thanksgiving, setting it on November 25, 1789 because the Revolutionary War was over. In an era of bad roads and news traveling no faster than the speed of a horse, some of the pioneers in Kentucky didn’t find out about it until the next year. After that it was dropped again until Mary Hale (author of Mary Had a Little Lamb) lobbied for its restoration. She was ignored, although many rural churches still held Harvest Day services which were sort of like Thanksgiving. That continues to this day.
President Lincoln declared a day of thanksgiving, setting the date for the final Thursday of November. This was in the middle of the Civil War, and many people did not think there was much for which to be thankful. Not surprisingly, people dropped the holiday after that, with communities or churches doing their own thing. The date was moved once more in 1939, when President Roosevelt settled on the fourth Thursday of November. The retail merchants lobbied for the change to give people more time to do their Christmas shopping. America was still coming out of the Great Recession, and FDR supported anything that would help the economy.
On the more secular side, the parades began with Macy’s Department Store in 1924; the helium balloons came a decade later. Soon, other retailers joined in the celebrations, all in hopes that their parade would draw attention to their store and encourage patrons to come and spend money on Christmas gifts.
They don’t make Thanksgiving like it used to extends to food, as well. I don’t think my Ol’ Curdlepuss would have thought too highly of the menu of 1621: venison, squab, fried corn, lobster (such a low class food it was considered fit only for servants, and by law could not be served more than twice a week), along with duck and vegetable stew. There were no desserts. No pumpkin or apple pie, and certainly no spray-on whipping cream. Apparently, the Puritans and their Native American guests did not mind; their feasting last for three days before they decided to clean up and go home. No one knows if the guests took home leftovers.
When we focus far too much on food and activities, or moan and groan about how the holiday isn’t nearly as good now as it was in the past, then we have lost the plot. From the era of the Puritan divines through Lincoln and up to the mid-1930s, the real emphasis has been a personal, community or national attitude of gratitude. Maybe we lost some of that when the major retailers used the day as the kick-off for the holiday shopping season with their midnight Black Friday sales. However, we do not have to take our marching orders from them. We sit at the Grown Ups Table now, so we should decide what we are going to make of the day. There is plenty of reason to give thanks.
I was thinking about that an afternoon or two ago when the leaf rake and I were spending quality time together. I had other things I wanted to do than do a mindless never-ending job on a cold and windy day and was feeling a tad sorry for myself. My go-to method for elevating my mood is to change the subject around to why I am happy to be pushing dead leaves out to the street.
My gratitude soon migrated beyond the leaves, and I began making a mental list of all the reasons I had to be thankful this year. Once you get started it’s almost easier to keep going than to stop. There are countless things we add to our list, starting with what has been happening in our life all the way up to the national and international level.
The reverse is true, too. It is sometimes just as important to be thankful for what we did not receive: No car accidents this year; no virus, bacteria, or other unpleasant bugs; nobody turned my nose to twelve because of a column I wrote that they despised. No coup or revolution in our country. We missed out on that Big Recession the bright boys and girls of Wall Street predicted. The list goes on.
It is our gratitude for what we have received (and not received) that is the heart and soul of Thanksgiving Day. Anything beyond that is just the spray-on whip crème on the pumpkin pie. It’s nice, but not necessary.
You and I have plenty of very good, solid reasons for having a truly thankful Thanksgiving this year. All it takes is a concert effort to create an attitude of gratitude. Go for it.