This article was originally published in The Cornell Daily Sun, Volume CII, Number 70, 6 December 1985. It was the guest feature article, appearing on page 5. See Source article (in new browser window/tab).
“Happy Turkey!” I told all my friends as I left school for Thanksgiving break. It was a phrase 1 had taken from my sister many years ago. Thinking it was "cute" then, I picked it up, and it’s been my Thanksgiving-time well-wishing term ever since. But amid the hustle and bustle of preparing the traditional feast this year, I was rather surprised at the direction in which my reflections led me.
Okay, I thought, so we’re cooking the turkey. Okay, so Dad's making the stuffing that everyone will say is so good (Dad and I both hate stuffing). But I realized as I waited for all the relatives who would come too early and too late (the same ones that come either too early or too late every year), that I really had no idea what this holiday was all about.
So I thought. My mind went way back — third grade? Thereabouts. Names popped up, half-forgotten names that, when I did hear them, I had lost in my mind what they referred to. Pinta. Niña. Santa Maria. The Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock, Americans and Indian corn. And more images. Steaming turkeys, cranberry sauce, potatoes instead of Stove Top® stuffing, the first Thanksgiving dinner. They were thankful that they had landed in a safe place, with friendly natives who welcomed them instead of sending them away or cooking them for din-din. I wonder what the “American Indians” would have done if they had known what white people would give them in return during the next 200 years — competition, prejudice, strife, virtual displacement. But before all that, the Pilgrims indeed had plenty to be thankful for.
And then I think of how we, the American people today, think of Thanksgiving Day. Well, as a college student, I certainly see how some of us regard this very special holiday. As a four-day vacation. Do we really throw our minds back a few hundred years to appreciate the courage and determination of the settlers of America? Do we take the time out to realize how much the Native Americans meant to these settlers? Give people fish, and they eat for a day. Teach them how to harvest vegetables and irrigate the soil, and they become prosperous and develop enough independence to push out the natives. And how often do we remember these things?
Does today’s busy urban citizen drive into the suburbs for Thanksgiving dinner to commemorate teh writing of the Constitution ,or to shamefully recall the Civil War? Face it. The person is there for the turkey.
Does today's successful woman, with her own profession, her company car, her husband and kids, approach the dinner table that special Thursday, thinking of the contributions of all those Americans of the last few hundred years that enabled her to have what she does today? Or is she worried that she may have gained a pound too many since the summer, when she saw all these people last?
Is her son, already 12, thinking of the great minds who shaped the government of the United States and made it one of the more satisfying forms of government that exist today? Or is he dying for the conversation to end, and the main course be set out, so he can finish eating the meal that's not special most every other day of the year, to run off into the den to catch the last part of March of the Wooden Soldiers on Channel 5?
So what has happened to Turkey Day? Just what's happened to Christmas. Which now starts after Halloween instead of after Thanksgiving. And no one even remembers what All Hallow's Even is anymore.
Some things are inevitable in our culture, I guess. I just would rather not see
this holiday corruption in my time. I still remember the good old says. But like
Billy Joel says in Keeping the Faith:
”The good old days weren't always good /
And tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” Knock on wood.
So next year, when it’s November and you start thinking about what you want to do during Thanksgiving break, try to remember that part of your four-day vacation is Thanksgiving, and what it means. And when you’re a parent, maybe your kids will say to you “Happy Thanksgiving” instead of “Thanks for giving turkey.”
— Sami Besalel
When published, Sami Besalel was a Junior in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ithaca's Cornell University.
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