Late to the party

As we all know, in 1621, our Pilgrim fathers, thankful for a good harvest, threw a party for themselves and for neighboring Indians (who, we assume, happily attended and enjoyed the company of their new and generous neighbors, with whom they hoped to forge eternal bonds of friendship and equal partnership).  The Puritan tradition, which the pilgrims brought with them from England, often observed special days of thanksgiving -- observed by fasting. 

But the pilgrims were already Americans, and Americans don't do fasting.  God loves a full stomach, we choose to believe.  Bring on the stuffed turkey, the pilgrims might have said, although they probably actually ate mainly corn and squash.

Jumping ahead 150 years or so -- most of which were unpleasantly nonfestive, as a quick reading of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter will suggest -- we see George Washington proclaiming November 26, 1789, as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.  The holiday was still somewhat embryonic -- the president made no mention of 18-pound turkeys with all the trimmings, followed by the celebrants' rolling around in pain on the floor, suffering the after-effects of their gluttony and barely able to attack the forthcoming mince and pumpkin pies..

Nor was any mention yet made of Black Friday sales commencing on Thursday evening.

In fact, no mention was made of Thursdays.  But, Wikipedia assures me, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, most states did observe the Thanksgiving celebration -- be it fast, feast, or exercise in gourmandism -- on the last Thursday of November.  Abe Lincoln made it official, nationally, in 1863, although the South -- as is its wont -- was a bit slow to go along.

By the twentieth century, the day after Thanksgiving had become the de facto start of the national Christmas gift-buying orgy.  Merchants were devastated whenever November had five Thursdays, meaning that the commercial bonanza couldn't begin until November 30 at the earliest.  Congress came to their rescue, and in 1943 FDR signed a resolution ensuring that the holiday would begin always on the fourth Thursday in November.

As must be apparent, the date on which Thanksgiving is celebrated is quite arbitrary.  It doesn't have the same logical basis in hallowed history as, say, Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Christ on the date of the Roman revelries of the Saturnalia, or of Easter, which celebrates the Resurrection on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Having noted this lack of historical basis, therefore, my family feels free to celebrate this year's Thanksgiving on the last Saturday of November.  Casting the iron bonds of tradition aside and fearlessly creating our own holiday date.  Even choosing, if we so choose, a faux turkey created out of soy and wheat protein.

We do not so choose, of course.  And our break with the traditional holiday date results not from a frenzied sense of bohemian anarchy, but from logistical difficulties experienced by some of our family in reaching Sonoma, California, where the turkey -- once an actual living bird with hopes and dreams of its own, all too unfortunately ended in an untimely fashion -- will be gleefully consumed.

Next year, however, we will rejoin the rest of the United States.  Fourth Thursday in November it shall be.