Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving (A Historical Perspective

It was late September, 1863.

In his office at the White House, the President stared down at the reports on his desk, seeing them, but not reading or absorbing a single word.

In his mind, he was reliving every lost opportunity, every missed chance to bring the war to a swift conclusion.  Gettysburg.  Meade had Lee on the run, and stayed put because the roads were muddy.  Unbelievable.  Grant had performed well giving us Vicksburg, but now what?  Should really see about giving that man a bigger command somewhere.  And in the meantime, the fighting goes on.

The President looked up at the clock.  Two in the afternoon.  He'd spent most of the morning at the telegraph office.  Almost time to walk over there again, get the afternoon reports.  He mumbled something under his breath about getting enough exercise.

The only other man in the room glanced up at the sound.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Nothing, Seward.  Nothing at all," the president replied to his Secretary of State.

"Does not the war go as you would like it?  We have enjoyed excellent success this summer."

"I would like it over.  As it goes on at all, then no, it is not to my liking."  He sighed, heavily.  "No, not to my liking at all.  And our funds are low, our morale is lower.  Those rebels, for all the trouble they're causing, they have the conviction of their beliefs.  They're broke, but as long as they believe, they keep fighting.  You need either conviction or money to win a war.  And we are quickly running out of both."

Seward thought about this for a moment.  "You could free the slaves, again.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy that.  Gave the country a good boost."

"I don't find your humor very appropriate."

Seward chuckled.  "You never do." 

Seward stood and walked over to a map of United States tacked to one wall.  The map was covered in pins, reflecting relative positions of the nearly countless armies in the field.  As he walked, he stuffed his smoking pipe with tobacco and lit it casually.  "We already have the income tax; that's helped.  I supposed we could raise it again, but I doubt that would be very popular.  Do you wish to be re-elected next year?"

"The only thing I fear more than re-election is the prospect of someone else being elected.  No, if I must be in this office to prosecute this war, this is where I will stay."

Seward nodded.  "So, no income tax.  So, either we need to find another way to generate money, or we need to unite all the country in a common cause, perhaps based on some mythical aspect of our nation's heritage.  Remind them of the hardships our forefathers endured, and the beliefs that they clung to when little else remained.  That sort of thing."

The president thought for a long time, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock and Seward's gentle puffing on his pipe.  It had the feeling of one of the defining moments of history; one of the moments that changes the course of a nation forever.

Finally, he said, "I like the money idea better."

Seward grinned.  "Excellent.  Then, this is what we need to do.  Christmas is coming."

"Do you suggest we pray?"

"Just the opposite.  We start encouraging the people to buy more Christmas presents to give to each other, especially the children."

"Won't that just encourage greed?"

"No, sir, it most certainly will do much, much more than JUST encourage greed.  It will encourage generations of greed, selfishness, avarice, covetousness. And spending.  Much, much spending. We will encourage the merchants to extend lines of credit, so people can spend more than they have.  Banks will finance low-interest loans to pay back the merchants, and then raise those interest rates.  And we'll throw in enough excise taxes to bring in revenue by the wagon-load!  But..."

He trailed off.  The President looked expectant.  "But...what?  It sounds like a marvelous idea."

"But, it will work better if we focus our attention on just the few weeks before Christmas.  Just enough time to spend lots of money, but not long enough to regret the purchases and learn from their mistakes.  We should start it...I'd say the last Friday in November.  You should declare a holiday."

The President nodded.  "Yes, of course!  And I shall call it, Thanks-taking! To encourage people to take those presents they are being given, with thanks."

Early Bird Special:  Four-score and seven bucks off!

Seward blew a smoke ring in the shape of a dollar sign.  "You're a capable leader, Mr. President, but not very shrewd.  We can't declare a holiday just to make people buy stuff.  The holiday must be the day BEFORE.  And the next day, the shopping day, we'll tell all the stores to open early, so people can start shopping sooner.  And every year, they will open a little sooner, and a little sooner, until the holiday itself disappears.  By that time, we shouldn't need the holiday anymore."

"Excellent," the President shouted.  "Write something up, some declaration, or proclamation, or presidential thingamajig.  Call it Thanks--something.  Work on it.  And throw in some claptrap about Indians or Pilgrims or something.  Make it work!"

Seward nodded.  He had a piece of paper in his hand now, and was scribbling furiously:

New holiday, last Thursday of November.  Thanks-getting, or something similar.  Throw in crap about Pilgrims.  Try to work in a parade, and maybe some football.

And the rest is history.

Some thoughts on being Red Sox fan

It seems that the Red Sox have once again won the World Series.  And again, against the Cardinals. Third victory in less than a decade, and all the players should be very proud of themselves.  They are some fantastic ball players, and justly deserve the parade that the city gave them.

While we were watching the coverage of the parade as it was happening (because the TV happened to be on), my daughter looked up just as some reporter was interviewing a little girl about her age, all decked out in Red Sox gear, clutching a little stuffed Wally the Green Monster.  And my daughter looked at me and said, "Why can't I be the little girl on TV?"

And I chuckled good-naturedly.  I may have even tossled her hair.  And I said, "Maybe next year."

And to her, that meant just what it sound like.  I'd agreed, tacitly, that next year, after the Red Sox win the World Series again, I would take her to the victory parade so she could be interviewed by a TV reporter.

But to me, it was like a secret code, a quiet acknowledgement that while we in what is repeatedly referred to now as "Red Sox Nation" have gained a World Champion team, we have perhaps lost something in our nature, something that defined us for many decades.

Now, I'm probably not the biggest fan of baseball, in general.  I don't really follow it, don't watch it on TV, didn't watch a complete World Series game this year. 

My daughter probably likes baseball more than I do.

But I was born a Red Sox fan.

There really was nothing I could do about it, and choice never entered into it.  My father was a Red Sox fan, thus I was taught to be a Red Sox fan, and there was very little else to say on the subject.  He told me about Ted Williams, about the Impossibe Dream, about Carlton Fisk and the the homerun that almost wasn't.

I collected the baseball cards. Had an official Red Sox batting glove.  A souvenir baseball.  I remember my first game at Fenway (I'm pretty sure it was Clemens on the mound, though at the time, that meant nothing to me, and I had no idea why people kept holding up signs saying "K.")

But the year I really became a Red Sox fan, as I have always understood the term, was 1986.

That year, while I was busy being a kid, the Red Sox made it to the World Series for the first time in my lifetime.  Suddenly, I was interested!  The Red Sox were going to be World Champions!  All they had to do was beat the Mets, and really, how hard could that be?

You must know the story: They just about had it sewn up, when a ground ball down the first base line went right past the glove and between the legs of Bill Buckner, and the Mets went on to win, and win the following game as well, leaving us Red Sox fans heartbroken and disappointed.

Which, of course, was exactly the point!

We, the true Red Sox fans, have always lived in a state of perpetual heartbreak.

And that is not to say that we were never proud of our team, or that the team, prior to 2004, was somehow inferior.  I'd submit that Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Carl Yastremzci, or the '86 team that included Clemens, Wade Boggs, and Dwight Evans are easily the equal of any recent Red Sox lineup.  No, it wasn't for a lack of talent; it was... something else.

Every year, or so it seemed, they'd start off the season strong, then they'd lag behind, and come September, they'd surge ahead, sometimes barreling into the playoffs like an out-of-control locomotive, sometimes coming up just short (in '49, the entire season came down to one winner-take-all playoff game against the Yankees.  Hey, that reminds me of another season...)

And then, as though the universe realized what it was about to let happen...they lost.  No, they didn't lose: they blew it!  Year after year, they blew it!

And did eighty-plus years of constant disappointment turn Boston into a city of fatalists, without any shred of hope for the future?

Never been to Boston, have ya?

Red Sox fans have always been veritable fountains of unyielding optimism.  Every year, after every defeat, we would simply look at each other and say, "There's always next year."

This was famously immortalized on a bottlecap from the Nantucket Nectars juice company, which got into the habit of putting interesting facts or short jokes on the underside of their caps.  One cap said, "The Red Sox will win the World Series next year."  I guarantee, non-Sox fans didn't understand that cap.

And that taught me everything I needed to know about life.  That no matter what happened, no matter how hard you worked, how far you came, sometimes you'd still lose out, right at the moment it matters most.  And you what?  That's ok, because there's always next time.

They taught me good-sportsmanship.  They taught me persistence.  They taught me resilience.

And I'm a little worried that my daughter will never not know a world where the Red Sox are not known as World Champions.

Sure, I'm happy for them.  I was happy, truly happy, for all the fans in 2004, who had waited so long.  But now, I'm worried about the fans.

I'm worried that the fans will begin to expect to win.  They'll forget what it means to say, "Maybe next year."  They'll feel like they are entitled to win. They'll be obnoxious, unruly, intolerable.

In other words, I'm afraid they'll become that which they most abhor:

Yankees fans.