In Celebration of Thanksgiving

                   As Thanksgiving Day approaches, our thoughts turn fondly to family dinners, funny looking turkeys, football games and for some, a much-needed day off. It is a time for homecoming, a holiday uniquely American in concept. Several generations of a family break bread and enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company, in a warm and inviting family reunion, perhaps at Grandma’s ancestral home.

                  In the Norman Rockwell Museum, in western Massachusetts, hangs a series of the gifted artists most famous paintings. To me the most notable are those entitled the “Four Freedoms.” Freedom from Fear, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and lastly most ironically American, Freedom from Want.

                  In the warm oils, of the Freedom from Want painting, Rockwell portrays a large and multi-generational family sitting around a dinner table, laden with turkey and all of the stuffings. It is emblematic, I think, of the feast that America represents to the world, much of whom gets by on little or nothing for their daily fare. The full bounty of the American Republic is available to most of us, in celebrating the Thanksgiving Holiday. We have much to be thankful for in this great nation. Those who came before us left us an enviable legacy and a noble heritage that we enjoy daily, as well as on holidays. Our first Thanks should go to them for bounty that they provided for us.

                  The majority of the dishes served,  in the traditional American version of Thanksgiving dinner, are made from foods that are native to the New World. According to tradition, the Pilgrims received these foods or learned how to grow them, from the Native Americans. The first Thanksgiving dinner was the initial event, in a four hundred- year tradition of Americans who welcomed immigrants to our shores and helped nurture them, until they too could stand alone and “pay it forward” as it were, to those who came afterwards. The ancestors of most all of our families have benefited from these generous instincts, that are at the fundamental core of the American psyche.

                 When families gather, there is much laughter, and good -natured ribbing amidst family members, many of whom have not had the pleasure of each other’s recent company.  During dinner, our memories wander momentarily to simpler times long ago, when we were younger. An older generation sat around the dinner table then. A wistful smile emerges from us at some pleasant thought of a loved one, not now among us, and how they too enjoyed their time with us. Perhaps an odd family trait, or goofy characterization of that long-departed soul, makes us all laugh in loving memory. It is an opportunity for families past and present to come together, remember who they are and what they mean to each other,

                   And we ask “what of our friends and neighbors and those around us?” They too deserve our warm Thanks and appreciation for another year of friendship. For they have spent their lives in our company. Our good days and our bad days are all part of their lives as well. So, take a moment, on this wonderful holiday, and Thank your family and the people around you for all of the kindness, help and decency that they have afforded you in this last year. Give Thanks for them, for they too are but with us momentarily.

                   And always be mindful of the example, of Dicken’s Tiny Tim, toasting his family, during the Christmas holiday dinner in the epic novel “A Christmas Carol,” uttering that most heartfelt of all family wishes, “God Bless us every one.”

                    Happy Thanksgiving to y’all.

                                         -30-

                                    (611 words)

                            Joseph Xavier Martin