As Good A Day As Any On Which To Be Thankful

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY SENT FORTH a purely mercantilistic venture in 1607 which landed in North America and named the place after their company and their queen. They set about digging holes, looking for gold. Their intent was to enslave the natives and relieve them of their presumed gold and silver, after the fashion of the Spanish previously in the Caribbean and South America. Unlike their southerly counterparts, however, the North American natives kept neither gold nor silver, nor were conducive to enslavement, being of a more independent bent of mind. Rather than placidly coming forth unwittingly in large unarmed numbers, they merely scattered and fled into the forest, disgusted. Entirely unprepared to hunt, fish, or farm, the English endured their "starving time" in 1609 and 1610, and were reduced to stealing from the natives, and to cannibalism. In 1620, the saints and strangers sailed from southern England to the Netherlands, back to England, then to Massachusetts, where they too were reduced to stealing from the natives, who at one point told them "all you had to do is ask". When they asked why the natives displayed so much enmity towards them at first, the natives replied: "because you're a pack of thieves." They worked it out, largely owing to the inherent good nature of the natives, and their desirable quality of life. Thus began a long tradition of European descendants running away from their Christian communities to live among the Indians and improving their quality of life. Adopting native hunting and farming methods, feasting with them, and giving thanks to God all seemed expedient, and the legend of a day of thanksgiving emerged, even though days of giving thanks can be found in many other primitive cultures, including the Spanish settlements in Florida a half century before Jamestown and Plymouth. Abraham Lincoln, who could have delayed or prevented the Civil War merely by refraining from seeking the presidency, remains the most divisive president in American history, and the most tyrannical. Anyone caught so much as whistling "Dixie" in the streets of Washington D.C. during Lincoln's presidency was locked up, and the key was thrown away when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the ancient legal principle requiring the lock up law to either show cause why the body was being detained within twenty four hours, of let the corpus go free, alive. Lincoln had good reason to declare a national day of thanksgiving during the war between the states; he had not been assassinated, yet, though not from lack of trying, and the country still existed, though barely, even when a hundred thousand soldiers had been slaughtered, with a half million more to follow. FDR firmed up the date, and the rest is history. We eat, and we watch football, and in that consists our holiday "tradition". We should probably be eating deer along with the turkey, since that's what the pilgrims and the natives did, and because the turkey would have made a fine national bird, rather than the carrion chomping eagle, but Benjamin Franklin did not get his way. In any event, as long as we are fat and happy on the fourth Thursday in November, and well fed, its as good as day as any to be thankful, about as good as every other day.