Encino, Calif. (JTA) — This Thanksgiving, red, white and blue American flags will wave among orange, gold and brown gourds, Indian corn and honeycomb crepe paper holiday decorations. “The Star-Spangled Banner” will be heard among choruses of “Gobble Gobble Fat Turkeys.”
This is only fitting. Thanksgiving was first proclaimed a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to foster a sense of patriotism and unity in a country enmeshed in a Civil War.
“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens,” he said in his proclamation, “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” In 1941, Congress made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November.
Lincoln, without ever tasting a green bean casserole with canned onions or watching a football game, inaugurated a powerful American tradition.
This Thanksgiving, following the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, we are already a patriotic and unified country. But, enmeshed in an uncivil war against terrorism and bioterrorism, a war being fought on our homeland as well as abroad, we are also a frightened and anxious country, in need of the comfort tradition brings.
For tradition, with its explicit rituals, roots us in a time and place and provides us with a personal and communal history. Especially in times of turmoil, tradition sustains us, giving us the illusion that life remains the same — or the hope that it can be again.
“Tradition, tradition!” Tevye sings in “Fiddler on the Roof.” We Jews, perhaps better than anyone, know the power of tradition.
From the ritual circumcision to burial, from Tishrei to Elul, we mark our lifetimes and calendar years with ceremonies and celebrations. These provide us with meaning and a sense of identity — and, more than anything else, ensure our survival, even through pogroms, persecutions and exile.
The First Thanksgiving
For Americans, no national holiday is as special, widely observed or tradition-laden as Thanksgiving. It brings us together, Americans of all races, religions and walks of life, no matter how or when we or our ancestors ourselves arrived in this country, to celebrate a common heritage — and to eat quintessential American foods: turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin pie.
And so, on Nov. 22, we remember the story of the First Thanksgiving, which was celebrated for three days at Plymouth Plantation in the fall of 1621. The Pilgrims, after a devastating winter, invited the Wampanoags — who had taught them how to plant corn, build Indian-style shelters and become self-sufficient — to a feast to give thanks for their survival and their first harvest.
But the story of the First Thanksgiving, which was a one-time event, wasn’t incorporated into American history until the 1890s or early 1900s. It also wasn’t incorporated entirely accurately.
Many of the Pilgrims were not merely seekers of religious freedom but strict fundamentalists, separatists from the Church of England, who were intent on building their version of the “Kingdom of God” in the New World. Moreover, 50 years after that First Thanksgiving, their descendants, by transmitting diseases and waging war, had wiped out almost the entire Wampanoag tribe.
“Mom, why do you have to ruin every holiday?” my son, Jeremy, 12, asks. But the truth is, while we need to remedy the historical misconceptions and re-examine our treatment of the Native Americans, we also need to retain the mythologized story. And to tell it.
As we tell the story of the Exodus, whether or not it occurred as the Bible describes it. Whether God literally rained Ten Plagues on Egypt, the Red Sea parted or 603,550 Israelites, along with their wives and children, their flocks and herds, wandered in the desert for 40 years.
What matters is the story — how, with God’s help, we escaped from slavery in Egypt, journeyed through the wilderness and finally entered the Promised Land. This story defines us as Jews. Thus, we are commanded to tell it to our children every year and to re-experience it, seeing ourselves as if we personally went out of Egypt.
Similarly, the story of the First Thanksgiving defines us as Americans. As a people who fled religious oppression, who exhibited courage and tenacity in face of terrible conditions, and who ultimately survived and thrived in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
While we don’t ritually tell the story of the First Thanksgiving, we ritually celebrate it with family and friends.
Interestingly, this year the American Jewish Committee, in response to the terrorist attacks, has published a Thanksgiving “Haggadah” with inspirational readings and prayers about freedom, and with a request to light two candles — a memorial candle and a candle of hope.
This Thanksgiving, we can add a tradition of lighting two candles and displaying them among our flags and holiday decorations. And we can hope, as Lincoln implored God in his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation, for “the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union” for our country and for our world.
Jane Ulman lives in Encino, Calif., with her husband and four sons.
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