At its heart, our Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, and in Colorado at least, it makes no sense to celebrate it in late November, long after the crops are in. We would enjoy better feasts if we moved it to the Canadian date, the second Monday in October.
It’s not as though there’s anything carved in stone about the current date. In North America, governors and presidents were apt to proclaim a “day of thanksgiving” just about any time of the year, and the current national holiday goes back only to Oct. 3, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November would be “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
Lincoln’s reasons for gratitude covered just about everything – not just a harvest from the fields, but for iron and coal from the mines: “In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.”
As you may have noticed, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November this year. That’s because in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it on the penultimate (it means “next to last,” not “even cooler than the ultimate”) Thursday of November.
That way, there would be a longer Christmas shopping season, which traditionally started after Thanksgiving then, although these days it often starts right after “back to school.” A longer gift-shopping season presumably meant more retail sales; who says Democrats don’t care about business?
Some states, however, kept to the traditional last Thursday instead of the new-fangled federal “Franksgiving,” and in 1941, Congress compromised and set Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday – the ultimate Thursday on most years, but the penultimate in some years, like this one.
There are, of course, things to be thankful for this year. But when some items come to mind, so also do things that one might be “unthankful” for.
For instance, I’m thankful for phone answering machines, since they mean that I don’t have to respond every time the device rings. On the other hand, I’m unthankful for other people’s answering machines, voice mail and the like, because I can’t immediately reach them when I call, and if I didn’t want to reach them, I wouldn’t be calling.
Similarly, I am grateful for e-mail. I can stay in touch with lots of people; it’s easy to store and search, unlike paper mail. But I am ungrateful for the 50 to 100 messages I get every day touting stock hustles, OEM software and V!@gr@.
Among the greatest aspects of living in this country, especially out in the boondocks, is public land. Just a few minutes from my door are thousands of acres, often with interesting old roads and trails, that I can explore with the dog on our daily strolls. On many days we meet other dog-walkers, adding to the pleasure. I am thankful for this.
However, I am unthankful for all the ATVs that roar around. Barry Goldwater once referred to these as Japan’s revenge on America for winning World War II. Despite what I am told about how these devices allow the old and disabled to enjoy the great outdoors, all the drivers I’ve seen are younger and healthier than I am.
What makes me even more ungrateful is that people with $4,000 machines call me an “elitist” for going outdoors with my $20 boots and free dog. Or perhaps I should be grateful to live in a country where it’s so easy to join the “elite.” In other places, you might have to attend prestigious universities and make tons of money, but in America, you can just go for a walk.
And one of the things I’m most grateful for on Thanksgiving is that there’s usually an alternative to eating turkey. Whoever decided that fowl was edible was a lot hungrier than I ever want to be.
In other words, I’m grateful that I’ve never suffered from hunger to that extent, and that’s a good reason to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
