Essay: Why We've Failed to Ruin Thanksgiving

Who really thinks about Thanksgiving? Most adults absorb the larger meaning of the holiday as part of the first-grade catechism (Pilgrims, friendly Indians, a day for offering thanks) and rarely move beyond Care-Bears sentimentality. This built-in ickiness is a pity, since it tends to overshadow the symbolic significance of Thanksgiving, that most unrepentantly old- fashioned of American celebrations, that patriotic heirloom that nobody has figured out a way to ruin.

For nearly 150 years, ever since a women's magazine called Godey's Lady's Book began championing the cause of an annual day of Thanksgiving, the topic has been drowning in a syrupy sea of treacle. Almost every Thanksgiving cliche was in place by the mid-19th century: snow-thatched New England farmhouses, menus of turkey and cranberry sauce, families bowing their heads in grateful prayer, and wayward children dramatically returning home for the occasion. Even Abraham Lincoln in ushering in the modern national Thanksgiving holiday could not rise above what a latter-day President might call "the banality mode." Just weeks before he composed the soaring sentences of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln began his 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation with this hackneyed conceit: "The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies."

Today, of course, healthful skies mask the hole in the ozone layer. But in a suddenly peaceful world where the doors of the Iron Curtain have rusted open, no one should ridicule the simple giving of thanks. Each of us has private reasons for gratitude, since in so many ways 1989 has been a bountiful year. For me, I am sincere in my appreciation for the way the greenhouse effect has allowed Indian summer to stretch on into the college basketball season. Moreover, I consider it a personal blessing that Jackie Mason was canceled, Donald Trump failed in his efforts to make his name synonymous with American Airlines, Ronald Reagan managed to return from Japan and no trend spotter has successfully named the '90s before they happen.

Yet Thanksgiving represents more than a litany of good tidings and an amalgam of turkey-time truisms. There is a stubborn rectitude to the holiday itself, reminiscent of its stiff-necked Pilgrim forbearers. More than any other date on the calendar, Thanksgiving has remained private and personal, devoid of the tinsel trappings that mar the rest of contemporary life. On this ecumenical holiday, Americans are allowed to be as prayerful or as secular as they choose, with no one complaining that they have somehow taken the thanks out of Thanksgiving.

For all the public prattle about family values, no other holiday brings generations together without the lure of anything more tangible than a good dinner. Think of the novelty of an extended family forced to spend the day doing little other than talking, eating and digesting. Distractions are gloriously limited: the malls are closed and the televised sports offerings sparse. Unlike New Year's Eve, no one feels compelled to have the time of one's life or broods unduly when reality fails to conform to these exaggerated expectations. The perfect Thanksgiving is timeless, as families replicate their own familiar rituals, complete with the unconscious re-enactment of parental conflicts and sibling rivalries that may date back to the Eisenhower Administration.