Thanksgiving, is one day enough?

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“Over the river and through the woods

To grandmother’s house we go”

I wonder, do the kids still sing the Thanksgiving Song we learned at Maria Hastings Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts named for the nineteenth century philanthropist Maria Hastings Cary who funded the town library and performance hall.,

Or has it gone out of fashion. I’m sure the Thanksgiving pageants have, those First Thanksgiving theatrical extravaganzas - with boys and girls dresses up with black construction paper Pilgrim hats and yellow paper buckles on their shoes. The Thanksgiving myth of the friendly Wampanoag feasting the Plymouth colonists has melted in the historical truth of their subsequent slaughter in King Phillip’s or the Great Narragansett War, which combined with imported disease to decimate these indigenous Americans.

Evidently there was a three day feast in 1621. The Wampanoag did help the colonists, perhaps as potential allies against their rivals the Narragansetts, probably did save the lives of the Plymouth people, a decision that they may regret today. However the manifest destiny era myth of them ceding the land to this new great white Christian nation was propaganda, justifying slaughter of other indigenous people in the west. Sorry if that turns Turkey Day into a downer.

Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by President George Washington in 1789. President Thomas Jefferson declined to celebrate it a few years later, setting the tone for intermittent gratitude celebration until President Abraham Lincoln made it a National holiday during the Civil War and President Ulysses S. Grant enshrined it as a federal holiday. Federal workers finally got the day off by act of the 1985 Congress, though some presidents like FDR shuffled the day. Since 1942 it has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day.

I feel shallow saying this, but for me Thanksgiving Day was always about the FOOD. We went to the high school football game. We gathered. We ate. We collapsed into a tryptophan induced food coma . Later we watched some football games on television. We ate leftovers for days. “Maybe just a sliver of pumpkin pie. Is there any whipped cream left?”

Sure my father said grace. He always did that. I remember my parents started an after-grace tradition of saying “one thing you are grateful for.”?I also remember resenting, (is that too strong a word?) being slightly annoyed with the delay in getting to the FOOD.

It was later, perhaps when attempting to pass on the “one thing you are grateful for” tradition to my children, that I began to think about the meaning of thanksgiving, of the centrality of being grateful to being a good person.

I have lived a privileged life. Oh, a few times I ate a bit more Ramen than I would have liked, but I was never food insecure. ?I’ve always had a roof over my head. There has always been turkey at Thanksgiving. Once, the first year I was separated, I backpacked instead of accepting T-day invitation from the mother of my children or well-meaning friends, but I carried a frozen turkey breast to cook over a fire and was grateful for the lean-to roof over my head in the snow.

I have been fortunate in my life and have not always appreciated people who helped my and even rejected some who were trying to help me. But I am grateful and I do believe that one day per year to express gratitude is wholly inadequate.

Being grateful requires humility. It requires empathy or at least a sensitivity to others’ emotional needs, intentions, challenges and pain . It requires a positive outlook, looking “on the bright side of life." For some gratitude begins with grace, the blessings of a Supreme Being, for others an appreciation of one’s place in nature. Some others find grace within and gratitude arises every day from one more day of rain or shine existence. “Isn’t it nice, we’re having weather.”

I hope I say thank you, if not as much as I should, at least enough so people around me know that I appreciate what they do for me, that I am grateful to and for them.?Let’s be real, I probably don’t, which is why I’m taking advantage of this Thanksgiving week to express my thanks. .

I am grateful for:

·??????Love. I am blessed with people who love me and whom I can love. my wife, my children, my sisters, and their families, and all our extended family. Many friends, so many friends, some I grew up with or lived with. Some friends I met at work, some I played with. Some I have not met but only exchanged ideas and affection here on LinkedIn and other social media.

·??????Life and health. I woke up this morning and I know some who didn’t. I may whine the old person’s bodily complaints, but I’m still breathing, still “kicking around pretty keen yet,” so is my wife and my older sister, my wife’s older sister, and younger brother.

·??????Memories of all those loved, but lost as they passed on, Jeannine, Ric, Connie, Glen, David, Nan and Ray and so many more.

·??????Work -yeah I know I’m supposed to be retired, but as Billie says “you’re still working; you’re just not getting paid for it." So my career -actor- booking agent-consultant has a new leg -writer of stories and songs. I am grateful for all those literary agents who read queries and proposals and sample chapters, even if they never wrote back or if they did and made their rejections more tangible. Thank you, no, I really mean it, thank you. Mostly I am grateful for readers, here on LinkedIn, on beBee, on BizCatalyst 360, on Medium and my blog Wisdom from Unusual Places. Thank you all for a writer without readers is like a leader with no one behind him -delusional.

I am grateful for the life I have lived and am living. I wish for all the blessings I have received and many more days upon this great green Earth.

“Hurrah for the fun,

When the Turkey’s done

Hurrah for the Pumpkin Pie.”

Happy Thanksgiving!