|
Jewish World Review / Nov. 26, 1998 /7 Kislev, 5759
Paul Greenberg
The most American holiday
AS EVERY WELL-TRAINED SOUTHERNER KNOWS, the first Thanksgiving was held in Virginia in
1619 -- at Berkeley Plantation outside Williamsburg, to be specific.
If the Pilgrims up in New England had been a little quicker, and better navigators, they
might have made the festivities instead of being waylaid in drafty Massachusetts on
their way to the sunny South.
As someone once said of Christopher Columbus, he was an admirable theoretician
when he insisted the planet was round but a poor judge of distances. The Pilgrims
were a hardy breed, but less than exact seafarers.
With their usual genius for infusing material experience (or any other kind) with spiritual
qualities, the Pilgrims saw in their blunder a providential hand at work. Rather than
curse their luck, they embraced their trials. Which may be why they endured.
John White, one of the first historians of Massachusetts Bay Colony, gave thanks that
in the New World men could increase ``the respect unto Gods honor ... by this work
of replenishing the earth.'' Here, he wrote, men could know ``the largeness of his
bounty'' and map ``the extent of his munificence to the sonnes of man.''
Now a people who think like that are hard to discourage.
When the good times -- namely, bare survival -- came for the Pilgrims, they wasted no
time in throwing a bash for some earlier settlers in the neighborhood, Chief Massassoit
and some 90 of his braves.
Although not Southerners, the Pilgrims had manners enough to know that thanks are
best given together with others, and that bounty is best appreciated when shared.
These newcomers had come through a bleak season and a sea of troubles; thanks
were in order, and it was time to invite the neighbors over.
Thanksgiving is scheduled routinely now by presidential proclamation, and put on the
calendar well in advance for the convenience of busy citizens. Is that an act of hubris,
or of faith? I vote for faith, buttressed by experience.
It would take decades before the Puritans, who came in the Pilgrims' wake, made
Thanksgiving a habit. In those first years, feasts alternated irregularly with fasts,
depending on whether the rains came or a ship was lost, or whether the crops were
meager or the Indians proved tractable.
The Pilgrims might have claimed those early Thanksgivings were foreordained, like
everything else, but they would never have been so presumptuous as to schedule them
ahead of time. There may be nothing so un-Pilgrim or completely American as today's
fixed day of thanksgiving on a given Thursday every November.
Yet there is no holiday more American than Thanksgiving. The way we celebrate it
today might strike the Pilgrims as sinful pride, but their spiritual descendants accept it
as another evidence of grace.
That acceptance, that routine thankfulness, is part of the national genius. It requires an
unusual strength to accept the unearned with a simple Thank You. It takes grace to
remain unapologetic for material wellbeing. And it takes great faith to anticipate
prosperity -- not just for one's self, or for one's fellows, but for all. Which is how grace
leads to charity.
Recognizing that we have been blessed, we proceed to bless others. Maybe that's why
the generosity of Americans is noted worldwide. We share because we have been
given much to share. Prosperity may do more to encourage generosity in man than
than any number of stern lectures.
What a strange, unconsciously spiritual achievement Thanksgiving is. Not that
Americans can take credit for it. The land shaped us before we shaped the land.
Perhaps that is why we have grown so unafraid of grace, so accepting of it.
People with less to be thankful for say we ought to be guilty, not grateful, for our
prosperity and strength.
But guilt is the great enemy of grace, and of thanksgiving. There are those who insist
that Thanksgiving must be paid for, grace earned. To them, every holiday and holy day
is an excuse to excoriate This Corrupt Society. (Which also explains the attempts to
rid Christmas of Santa Claus.)
Every year some grinch will be heard trying to remake Thanksgiving in the image of his
own ideology. Ideology is a word and concept the Puritans did not have, which may
explain their success. Faith, hope, and charity they knew, but ideology is a latter-day
phenomenon on these shores -- another useless but fashionable European import.
In a frontier society, ideology would have been just another unaffordable luxury. It still
is in what remains a frontier culture, however rich it has waxed. In this country's
progress towards thanksgiving, the experience of prosperity has led us to expect it.
The free and easy acceptance of Nature's bounty has proven a great survival skill.
There is something about prosperity that resists all theory. Our blessings are our most
influential teachers.
To quote the American historian, Daniel Boorstin: ``The mastery of nature depended
on the ability to understand rather than on the ability to persuade. The Big Lie could
not help against a snowstorm; it would kill no wolves and grow no corn. Therefore, it
was less important to make a grand plan, to make generalities glitter, than to know
what was what and how to control the forces of nature ....''
The perceptive Mr. Boorstin added one other thought: ``There is a subtler sense in
which the Puritan experience symbolizes the American approach to values. For the
circumstances which have nourished man's sense of mastery over his natural
environment have on this continent somehow led him away from dogmatism, from the
attempt to plan and control the social environment.`
At a time when theories abound, let us pause on this holiday, look around at what has
worked and will work, and give thanks for the fruits of
11/23/98: Same game, another round
11/20/98: EXTRA! RULE OF LAW UPHELD
11/18/98: Guide to the perplexed
11/09/98: A vote for apathy
11/03/98: Global village goes Clintonesque
11/02/98: Farewell to all that
10/30/98: New budget, same swollen government
10/26/98: Of life on the old plantation -- and death in the Middle East
10/22/98: Starr Wars (CONT'D)
10/19/98:Another retreat: weakness invites aggression
10/16/98: Profile in courage
10/14/98: A new voice out of Arkansas
10/09/98: Gerald Ford, Mr. Fix-It?
10/07/98: Impeachment Journal: Dept. of Doublespeak
10/01/98: The new tradition
9/25/98:
Mr. President, PLEASE don't resign
9/23/98: The demolition of meaning
9/18/98: So help us G-d; The nature of the crisis
9/17/98: First impressions: on reading the Starr Report
9/15/98: George Wallace: All the South in one man
9/10/98: Here comes the judge
9/07/98: Toward impeachment
9/03/98: The politics of impeachment
9/01/98: The eagle can still soar
8/28/98: Boris Yeltsin's mind: a riddle pickled in an enigma
8/26/98: Clinton agonistes, or: Twisting in the wind
8/25/98: The rise of the English murder
8/24/98: Confess and attack: Slick comes semi-clean
8/19/98: Little Rock perspectives
8/14/98: Department of deja vu
8/12/98: The French would understand
8/10/98: A fable: The Rat in the Corner
8/07/98: Welcome to the roaring 90s
8/06/98: No surprises dept. -- promotion denied
8/03/98: Quotes of and for the week: take your pick
7/29/98: A subpoena for the president:
so what else is
new?
7/27/98: Forget about Bubba, it's time to investigate Reno
7/23/98: Ghosts on the roof, 1998
7/21/98: The new elegance
7/16/98: In defense of manners
7/13/98: Another day, another delay: what's missing from the scandal news
7/9/98:The language-wars continue
7/7/98:The new Detente
7/2/98: Bubba in Beijing: history does occur twice
6/30/98: Hurry back, Mr. President -- to freedom
6/24/98: When Clinton follows Quayle's lead
6/22/98: Independence Day, 2002
6/18/98: Adventures in poli-speke