First off, thanks to everyone that reads this newsletter-blog-publication thing. I don’t know what it does for those of you who read it, but it’s an important working space for me. I know that I ricochet between being long-winded and being banal but hopefully in between now and again I strike a balance.
In terms of taking away thanks, in reading the usual spate of “Thanksgiving doesn’t have the history that you think it has”, I’m struck that we never quite seem to get around to re-staging its history even in the 3rd-grade-pageant format, let alone as a nation. And yet we could. There’s a simple history suitable for simple re-tellings inside of the complex history of the holiday’s mistargeting and misrepresentation.
For what do we give thanks as a nation? Family and friends, certainly. For those who have those social worlds as a comfort. An abundance of food for those of us who have such abundance. An entry point to a holiday season when the demands of work should slow, unless you’re stuck with Elon Musk or his spiritual siblings as the incompetent tyrant of your workplace.
But what we also could give thanks for, if you know your history, is a moment of peace in the midst of the Civil War. That’s really what should rise to the national forefront each year as we restage the history of this holiday. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation invited his fellow Americans everywhere to give thanks and pray to God, commending “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, tranquility, and union.”
Lincoln went on to win the Civil War, his successors went on to lose the peace, and his enemies managed to wage a long-march insurgency to this day. So I always hope for the peace of a truce now—but I really hope that some day we can give thanks because the war is really over. In that day, where justice reigns along with peace, I think the seating chart at Uncle Sam’s dinner might look different and the portraiture more than Nast could envision, but the company will be much the same in spirit and the savor of the feast will be something that none of us have yet tasted.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, Tim!