In Praise of Thanksgiving

Civitas, 23 November 2006

Courtesy of the Simpsons, we Brits are now subject on the last night of every October to the annoying ritual of being disturbed by incessant door-bell ringing by small groups of young children dressed up as ghouls who are being conducted by one of their long-suffering mums on a charmless round of ‘trick or treating’.
No old fogie or so I like to think of myself, this is one American custom I wish had not crossed the pond.
Another one that hasn’t done so but which I wish would is Thanksgiving Day. Occurring on the fourth Thursday of November, this year this American national holiday falls today.
When dusk rolls westwards across the north American continent tonight, and wherever else any of them might be temporarily domiciled, American citizens will sit down with friends and family for a traditional annual Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, and cranberry sauce, followed by pumpkin pie.
Britain has no real equivalent festival, and that is a pity, but not because it could then serve as an occasion for a thousand and one tv cookery programmes.

The origin of the annual holiday was the three-day feast held in the Autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims who a year earlier had arrived on the Mayflower. They held their feast to celebrate having got through a very difficult first winter having arrived too late to plant and therefore to have been able to harvest any crops. They also held it to give thanks for those crops they had been able to harvest that year in time for their coming second winter there, not least, in part, as a result of the help they had received from native American Indians with whom these first settlers enjoyed very friendly relations.
Unlike the Harvest Festival I attended at my two children’s London primary school at which the assembled pupils were exhorted to thank ‘the farmers’ for the harvest (well, at least, it was not the European Commission they were told to thank!), the object of the Pilgrims’ collective gratitude was somewhat more exalted in status. Being devout and pious Puritans, these first settlers were giving their thanks to God for the providence they considered He had bestowed on them.
Despite the First Amendment of its Constitution, forbidding any state establishment of religion, and despite all the diversity to which the multifarious waves of immigration to America has given rise, this annual holiday continues to retain its original religious dimension in the US. That religious dimension is no longer quite as apparent or as universally embraced as it was in 1789 when, as first president of the USA, George Washington first called on the American peole to devote the last Thursday of November that year to such national thanksgiving. The language in which he did so could not have made its specifically religious character more apparent. His presidential proclamation runs:
‘Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and whereas both Houses of Congress have … requested me to “recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:” now therefore, do I assign Thursday, 26 November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection … ; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; — and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.’
‘And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several … duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.’
These are sentiments with which all people of good-will can and should be able to go along, even though they might have widely different ideas of that wherein true religion consists. Surely, even atheists and agnostics are capable of joining in such a form of celebration without compromising their consciences!
In any case, even if they would not wish or feel able to do so, I think that in our difficult times when it is those of differing forms of theistic faith who seem to be finding it so hard to get on, surely all British citizens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish persuasion could sign up to such a form of general thanksgiving? I think their so doing would be one very good way in which we might, without compromising our national heritage, work together to strengthen national cohesion and solidarity in the face of a diversity that at times can make civil society difficult to preserve.
Writing in 1947, that one-nation Tory of the old school, Quintin Hogg, once wisely observed: ‘Loyalty is the product of a sense of unity, of group life. Abolish this sense of unity and you destroy loyalty’.
Could not the institution of a National Thanksgiving Day be one way in which our divided community could come together in celebration and thereby perhaps begin to form affinities to unite them despite their differences? There’s a thought for this Thanksgiving Day!