Site search
sponsored by
News
ENLARGE
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthy skies.
Well, fruitful fields, anyway.
The last ones are my words. The first ones belong to Abraham Lincoln, the guy we can thank for Thanksgiving.
We usually think about the Pilgrims sitting down for a dinner of turkey and cranberry jelly with the Indians before placing bets on the big lacrosse game. At least that's the Thanksgiving image that usually comes to my mind.
But it was Lincoln who first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving. These days, he'd get branded a socialist for proposing some big government day of Thanksgiving. But back then, Republicans like Lincoln were in the big-government party. Ripping the Union apart was for Democrats. Times have changed.
In his Thanksgiving Proclamation of the Year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, Lincoln gave thanks not just for those fruitful fields and healthy skies, but for continued national industry and thriving mines. He was thankful for chopping down trees to make room for more Americans, and for all those new Americans being born to take the place of those trees. Mostly, he seemed to be thankful that while Americans were busy killing each other, no foreign nation had decided to invade and give us a helping hand.
But while you're giving thanks, Lincoln told Americans, put in a good word for healing “the wounds of the nation” and getting back to the business of “peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
There's that pesky “union” again. That's a big part of what that first official, government-mandated, tax-and-spend Thanksgiving was all about. The next year, the manuscript of that proclamation signed by Lincoln was sold off to benefit Union troops, those Blue Staters shooting at the Gray Staters who didn't care much for the federal government.
Of course, Lincoln wasn't alone in this communist conspiracy. He was in a league with the Liberal Media, namely, one Sarah Hale, the Oprah Winfrey of her day, who as the editor of a popular women's magazine was the arbiter of female tastes. Thanksgiving back then was a holiday celebrated mostly in snooty, elitist New England. Hale figured it should go national, so after striking out with past presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan – four presidents famous for absolutely nothing – she hit it big with Lincoln, who was looking for anything a divided country could agree on.
Despite Lincoln's best intentions, the fighting soon resumed over white meat versus dark meat, cranberry jelly versus cranberry sauce, and why Uncle Jack is passed out on the sofa again, but that's just the way we are.
It took another socialist, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to mark the date in stone as the fourth Thursday of November. Roosevelt had pushed the date ahead to give stores an extra week to sell stuff for Christmas. (That was the stimulus package back then.) But Americans couldn't agree on that either.
As we sit down for Thanksgiving this year, get into fights with family members and root for opposing football teams playing for rival state universities using our tax dollars, it would be nice if we could think about that whole union thing again.
Tea Party protesters (or Teabaggers, as the Oxford American Dictionary says we should call them, despite the bizarre sexual connotations implied) seem intent on fighting all over again not the Revolutionary War but the Civil War.
Republicans seem to think they've already formed their own confederation and have decided to sit on their hands rather than take part in the healthcare debate.
Right-wing commentators want the president to fail. The religious right seems to want him to die, lately invoking Psalm 109:8. “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” The next verse: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” Ahh, family values.
Meanwhile, the FBI reports that hate crimes are on the upswing, particularly crimes against blacks, members of religious groups and gays. The number of people victimized based on sexual orientation went up 13 percent.
It seems the Uncivil War has already begun.
When we sit down for Thanksgiving this year, it would be nice to remember the words of Lincoln. Sure, the economy is in the crapper, but we have fruitful fields and (in some cases) healthy skies. It's time to get to work healing “the wounds of the nation.”
And what's so funny about peace, harmony, tranquility and Union?
Write to David Frey via his Web site, www.davidfrey.me.
Well, fruitful fields, anyway.
The last ones are my words. The first ones belong to Abraham Lincoln, the guy we can thank for Thanksgiving.
We usually think about the Pilgrims sitting down for a dinner of turkey and cranberry jelly with the Indians before placing bets on the big lacrosse game. At least that's the Thanksgiving image that usually comes to my mind.
But it was Lincoln who first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving. These days, he'd get branded a socialist for proposing some big government day of Thanksgiving. But back then, Republicans like Lincoln were in the big-government party. Ripping the Union apart was for Democrats. Times have changed.
In his Thanksgiving Proclamation of the Year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, Lincoln gave thanks not just for those fruitful fields and healthy skies, but for continued national industry and thriving mines. He was thankful for chopping down trees to make room for more Americans, and for all those new Americans being born to take the place of those trees. Mostly, he seemed to be thankful that while Americans were busy killing each other, no foreign nation had decided to invade and give us a helping hand.
But while you're giving thanks, Lincoln told Americans, put in a good word for healing “the wounds of the nation” and getting back to the business of “peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
There's that pesky “union” again. That's a big part of what that first official, government-mandated, tax-and-spend Thanksgiving was all about. The next year, the manuscript of that proclamation signed by Lincoln was sold off to benefit Union troops, those Blue Staters shooting at the Gray Staters who didn't care much for the federal government.
Of course, Lincoln wasn't alone in this communist conspiracy. He was in a league with the Liberal Media, namely, one Sarah Hale, the Oprah Winfrey of her day, who as the editor of a popular women's magazine was the arbiter of female tastes. Thanksgiving back then was a holiday celebrated mostly in snooty, elitist New England. Hale figured it should go national, so after striking out with past presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan – four presidents famous for absolutely nothing – she hit it big with Lincoln, who was looking for anything a divided country could agree on.
Despite Lincoln's best intentions, the fighting soon resumed over white meat versus dark meat, cranberry jelly versus cranberry sauce, and why Uncle Jack is passed out on the sofa again, but that's just the way we are.
It took another socialist, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to mark the date in stone as the fourth Thursday of November. Roosevelt had pushed the date ahead to give stores an extra week to sell stuff for Christmas. (That was the stimulus package back then.) But Americans couldn't agree on that either.
As we sit down for Thanksgiving this year, get into fights with family members and root for opposing football teams playing for rival state universities using our tax dollars, it would be nice if we could think about that whole union thing again.
Tea Party protesters (or Teabaggers, as the Oxford American Dictionary says we should call them, despite the bizarre sexual connotations implied) seem intent on fighting all over again not the Revolutionary War but the Civil War.
Republicans seem to think they've already formed their own confederation and have decided to sit on their hands rather than take part in the healthcare debate.
Right-wing commentators want the president to fail. The religious right seems to want him to die, lately invoking Psalm 109:8. “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” The next verse: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” Ahh, family values.
Meanwhile, the FBI reports that hate crimes are on the upswing, particularly crimes against blacks, members of religious groups and gays. The number of people victimized based on sexual orientation went up 13 percent.
It seems the Uncivil War has already begun.
When we sit down for Thanksgiving this year, it would be nice to remember the words of Lincoln. Sure, the economy is in the crapper, but we have fruitful fields and (in some cases) healthy skies. It's time to get to work healing “the wounds of the nation.”
And what's so funny about peace, harmony, tranquility and Union?
Write to David Frey via his Web site, www.davidfrey.me.
