Ken Sehested
Processional. “Give Thanks.” —Abyssinian Baptist Church choir, New York City
Invocation. “Come ye fearful people come / Cast your sighs to highest heav’n / Yet—though terror’s harvest spread, / Casting sorrow in its stead— / Still the Promise doth endure / Life abounding to secure / Come, ye thankful hearts, confess / Mercy’s lien o’er earth’s distress.” —Ken Sehested, new verse to “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come”
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The topic of gratitude has become a marketing trend in publishing over the past decade—exemplified in Diana Butler Bass’ best-selling Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, not to mention a score of books written by and for the “positive psychology” school of authors and readers. Recently I read an article titled, “Neuroscience Reveals: How Gratitude Rewires Your Brain to be Happier.”
I just did a web search for “gratitude” and got 491,00,000 results in .20 seconds.
Yet the history of formal Thanksgiving declarations in the US has a dark side.
The first official declaration of a Thanksgiving Day did not come in 1621, when the Plymouth Puritans sharing an impromptu feast with the local Wampanoag natives, who had taught these undocumented immigrants how to fish, farm, and generally fend for themselves.
Rather, it wasn’t until 1637 that Plymouth colony Governor William Bradford officially declared an annual day of thanks. And he did so in direct response to the Pilgrims’ massacre of some 500 men, women and children of the Pequot tribe (survivors were sold into slavery) along the Mystic River.
He wrote, “the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.”
He then went on to record details of the event that was to be annually commemorated.
“It was a fearful sight to see [the Pequot] thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and [we] gave the praise thereof to God.”
President George Washington, in his first terms of office, declared a “day of thanksgiving and prayer” in 1789, months after the US Constitution was formally approved. But the observance did not come by way of perpetual declaration until October 1863, declared by President Abraham Lincoln, who announced an annual observance of the holiday, on the last Thursday of November, weeks after the Union’s pivotal victory at Gettysburg during the Civil War.
Public thanks for blessings can be a disguise for gloating and triumphalism. A kind of God-loves-you-but-thinks-I’m-special assertion.
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Hymn of praise. “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come.” —Leigh Nash
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Nevertheless, the observance of Thanksgiving ritual meals remains the calendar’s most common occasion for the gathering of scattered families. In a highly mobile culture, with weakened familial bonds, and even with the threat of contentious political conversations during the slathering of giblet gravy, this cultural habit is no small thing.
Scientists continue to provide confirmation of things mystics have promoted for eons: that singing is good for personal and communal health; that a cultivated devotional life tends to extend life expectancy; that wealth is not neutral but actually diminishes the capacity for empathy; that even the spiritual hunch that everything-is-connected is being confirmed by ecologists, cosmologists, and quantum physicists.
Such concurrence reminds me of the time, many moons ago, when I fled, midway through college, from my parochial Southern rearing to the urbane sophistication of New York City—only to discover that pointy-toed cowboy boots were the fashion rage in my newly-adopted Greenwich Village neighborhood. And Hank Williams Jr. was the headliner at the Bitter End nightclub. Go figure.
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Hymn of thanksgiving. “Count Your Blessings,” Rosemary Clooney.
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I have to resist the temptation to cynically roll my eyes when old stuff becomes swank among the trendy, upscale crowd. The stubborn truth, however, is that every abiding element of wisdom has to be renewed and re-energized from time to time: must be claimed and fortified and announced anew in every succeeding age.
So, yes, read books, listen to podcasts, have conversations, and perform new-old rituals that buoy the cultivation of gratitude, the practice of thanksgiving—with or without traditional holiday fare of turkey and sage-soaked dressing (my Mama’s favorite). And do so not as a bartered arrangement for future profit, but simply as the response of the loved to the Beloved.
The Black Friday gods and their fashionista agents are relentless in their assurance that you need more—more goods, second helpings, more esteem and recognition. Surround yourself with a community that says otherwise.
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Recessional. “Grateful: A Love Song to the World.” —Nimo Patel feat. Daniel Nahmod
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Additional resources for Thanksgiving:
• “Gratitude: A litany for worship”
• “Why is it hard to say thanks: 10 reasons”
• “Thanksliving,” a poem for Thanksgiving
