The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 11/24/08 Section: Viewpoints

Paul Bowers Second-year print journalism student

At an early point in our nation's prehistory, a group of hard-working colonists sat down with the native people. They ate together to commemorate the hardships they'd endured and to give thanks for the people and the providence that had pulled them through.

Fast-forward a few centuries and we've got an official holiday called Thanksgiving that looks a bit different. We still revel in the plenty we've enjoyed - more than plenty, oftentimes. There tends to be a lot of football. People wear flannel. That night, people gird their loins for a diehard morning of bargain shopping. And at some point, we stop to say we're thankful for things like pecan pie and America.

But some years, I have to wonder at the shallowness of the gesture. If we're compacting an entire year's worth of gratitude into one day, shouldn't there be more to it than dinner?

Maybe Thanksgiving is about something other than the homey good vibrations we so cherish. Maybe the giving of thanks is a far more active and involved process than we've been led to believe.

First of all, we're rarely as specific as we should be. I remember one Thanksgiving years ago when my mother had us all write out things for which we were thankful, read them as we blessed the food and put them in a basket at the center of the table.

At the time, I was hungry and perturbed with anything that delayed the meal, but I now realize this is exactly what's in order. Get precise. Thank the people who've provided for you. If you're religious, this is as good a time as any to thank God.

The other problem I've observed in my own thanksgiving is a lack of follow-up. President Abraham Lincoln had some stirring words on this topic in his 1863 Proclamation of Thanksgiving, in the heat of the Civil War:

"And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also ... commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation."

Abe was onto something that we so often forget. He understood that we should never give thanks without remembering the poor and wanting in our midst. By extension, we now know that an unshared bounty is meaningless, that any abundance will only make us miserable if we hoard it.

I met a student from Colombia last week who is unable to be with his family for the break. Although his country observes no such holiday, he told me that a local family is having him over for dinner Thursday night. This, I believe, is how Thanksgiving should look - not far removed from the first.

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