Giving Thanks

PEOPLE OFTEN have "favorite holidays, and Thanksgiving is one that is often mentioned. I never have been able to decide which is my favorite, and I fear I am running out of time to pick a favorite. Basically, I like them all, and have no real complaints about any of them, other than the fact that as I have aged, I have developed an intense hatred for the noise of fireworks. My biggest complaint is that they upset dogs and cats. I put my Christmas lights up on November fourteenth this year, earlier than ever. Just a few strands of colored lights across the windows on the front porch, nothing special, but very attractive at night. For some reason, I had the urge to start celebrating the holidays, early. I became too lazy to put up a Christmas tree several years ago. I'll probably take the lights down on the first of January, and will probably feel amazed at how fast my six week holiday celebration passsed by, and how fast twenty twenty one passed by. Every year passes faster than the previous, as all old people know. It no longer matters to me whether I have anyting remotely like a "Thanksgiving dinner", with turkey, and all the rest, although I love Thanksgiving cuisine. I almost feel as if I have, over the course of a long life, had my fair share. Even so, every year I manage to scrape up a Thanksgiving full course meal, even though I have lived alone for decades. The last few years the local senior center has been my source, and it is absolutely delicious. As always, food is better when somebody else cooks it. I can make it through an entire calendar year without pumpkin pie, but just one good slice on Thanksgiving, or near Thanksgiving, keeps me going for a full year. The history of Thanksgiving, like most American history, often gets twisted, lost in the shuffle, as reality is obscured by revisionis, hagiographic fantasy. It must be said that overall, the people who settled North America at Jamestwon in 1607, and those who settled in 1620 in Massachusetts did not get along well with the indigenous people they encountered. In both instances, therew ewrea early hopeful signs of cooerations an conciliation, but, in both cases, the natives and the invaders were at odds from the beginning, and the entier American historical experience between natives and invaders repidly devolved into centuries of bloody conflict interlaced with precariously preserved peace. Thanksgiving, a day of giving thanks, was only made into a national holiday in the nineteen thirties. But, despite all the fuss and confusion and mixed history, a day of giving thanks is a good idea for the American people, who can always stand a bit more gratitude and humility.