"I agree. Lots of good food and NO PRESENTS.
Posted on 11/23/2005 11:42:15 PM PST by RWR8189
Concerning Thanksgiving, that most distinctive and unique of all American holidays, there need be no resentment and no recrimination. Likewise, there need be no wearisome present-giving, no order of divine service, and no obligation to the dead. This holiday is like a free gift, or even (profane though the concept may be to some readers) a free lunch--and a very big and handsome one at that. This is the festival on which one hears that distinct and generous American voice: the one that says "why not?" Family values are certainly involved, but even those with no family will still be invited, or will invite. The doors are not exactly left open as for a Passover Seder, yet who would not be ashamed to think of a neighbor who was excluded or forgotten on such a national day?
Immigrants like me tend to mention it as their favorite. And this is paradoxical, perhaps, since it was tentative and yet ambitious immigrants who haltingly began the tradition. But these were immigrants to the Americas, not to the United States.
You can have a decent quarrel about the poor return that Native Americans received for their kindness in leading Puritans to find corn and turkeys in the course of a harsh winter. You may find yourself embroiled, as on Columbus Day, with those who detest the conquistadores or who did not get here by way of Plymouth Rock or Ellis Island. ("Not for us it isn't," as the receptionist at Louis Farrakhan's Final Call once glacially told me, after I had pointed out that her boss had desired me to telephone that very day.) Even Hallowe'en is fraught, with undertones of human sacrifice and Protestant ascendancy. But Thanksgiving really comes from the time when the USA had replaced the squabbling confessional colonists, and
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Fret not, Chris. PETA will try to come up with something.
Thanksgiving has surpassed Christmas as my favorite holiday....no presents to buy, just lots of good cooking and family and even a little old football game and did I mention NO PRESENTS?
Thanksgiving became my favorite a long time ago. Food, Family, and Football.
He's never eaten at my house. Having said that, we're going to bf's sister's house later today for dinner. All I have to do is bring a dessert :-)
Reminds me of this WKRP's Famous Turkey Drop
"The whole point is that one forces down, at an odd hour of the afternoon, the sort of food that even the least discriminating diner in a restaurant would never order by choice."
I think turkey and stuffing are delicious, Mr. Hitchens, and my family and I do not "force it down." Maybe turkey is something you have to be brought up with to appreciate, I don't know, but we really enjoy it.
This from a guy whose countrymen think the sight of kidneys at the breakfast table is appetizing :)
Happy Thanksgiving, Mr, Hitchens.
Mr. Hitchens forgets that the huge turkey, not a goose, was sent to Bob Cratchit by the reformed Ebeneezer Scrooge.
>> "But Hitch is originally a Brit, after all." <<
Good point, and I think the Brits are in NO position to carp about American food or cooking. NOBODY travels to Britain for the FOOD.
Accompanied by baked beans on toast!
Well lucky you! Obviously your home team isn't the Detroit Lions! They make even the Grinch pucker up and pout.....
Icy snow covered roads, screaming misbehaved kids, family arguments and burnt squash is certainly a welcome relief after 3 hours of torturous Thanksgiving Day Lions football.....How the heck can any football team expect to go to a championship with a quarterback named "Joey"?
Wifey - an immigrant and now a U.S. citizen - is adding a new Asian variant to today's Thanksgiving table with a huge cauldron of crab fried rice ($20 for that single pound of Chesapeake Bay backfin).
Her several pounds of jumbo shrimp (Asian style) became a welcomed tradition several years ago. Now the whole family expects it.
It's the perfect holiday.
I think Mr. Hitchens has much to learn about non-elite America.
I personally have ordered hot turkey sandwiches at diners on many occasions.
And in Portland, there is a restaurant (not a diner...more of an upscale place) that specializes in roast turkey...every day of the year!
Gee whiz, you guys. Lighten up on the guy. Be thankful there is at least one journalist, foreign or not, who has some nice things to say about America.
Wonderful, wonderful column.
The REAL Story of Thanksgiving...
"Dead White Guys - Or - What Your History Books Never Told You"
RUSH: From my second bestseller, "See, I Told You So, ""Chapter 6, "Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving." The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that's the 1600s for those of you in Rio Linda, California). The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.
A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.
On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible.
The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.
But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves.
And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!
This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.
Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.
They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.
Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.
That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!
But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.
"The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God," Bradford wrote. "For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice."
Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself? What's the point?
Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?
"This had very good success," wrote Bradford, "for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the "seven years of plenty" and the "Earth brought forth in heaps." (Gen. 41:47)
In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.
Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you're laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.
So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the "Great Puritan Migration."
Now, you probably haven't read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don't think this lesson is still being taught to children -- and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it's not thanks to William Bradford. It's not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you'll get the point. The word "God" is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times... If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you'll get thrown in jail, but that's what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I'm telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington's first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven't read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I'm happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.
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