Fair enough. I've often wondered at the emphasis on food, thinking a day of giving thanks might include such things as quiet reverence or maybe even fasting. There is speculation that the Pilgrims we learned about in preschool actually did go through a period of formal thanksgiving in which they fasted and were thankful for those lives that had been spared from starvation that year, but it was an entirely separate affair from what became the model for giving thanks in America.

You remember that story. The crops were fat in the summer of 1621, thanks to help from the Wampanoag natives, and the devout settlers celebrated the plenty with a big rollicking harvest festival, complete with a spread of roasted wild turkey and fresh venison. And while an official national day of "thanksgiving" has been proclaimed every year in the U.S. since 1941 and, over the past four centuries, the day has become a rider for other worthy notions such as charity and gratitude, the fourth Thursday of November remains an old-fashioned harvest festival, and a fledging one, at that. The Japanese, Greeks, and Egyptians have been doing it hundreds, even thousands, of years. And while not a harvest festival, the Muslim month of Ramadan, such a fixture in today's news, is, simply put, a time to be thankful.

Most of us don't shuck our own corn or slaughter our own wild turkeys, and there usually isn't a lot of doubt about whether or not the crops at Safeway will yield enough to get us through the winter, but we do lay our bounty out on the card table and share it with each other. We invite neighbors and friends and coworkers to share the feast. We play football in the back yard. (The Wampanoag Indians and Pilgrims played games together at the famous three-day feast, thus giving birth to the American tradition of avoiding helping out in the kitchen.) Some of us have even created other rituals to celebrate what we've been given.

A friend told me about a woman he knew in Olympia, Washington, who lived in a bus in the woods with her five-year-old son. She raised rabbits for food. She felt they had a very rich life, and every Thanksgiving Day took her son to a soup kitchen. She wanted him to see how fortunate he was by sharing a dinner with people who were homeless, without family, and truly down on their luck. This was her way of showing appreciation for what she considered her own prosperity.

Some family friends of mine host a post-Thanksgiving feast at their home, where they invite fifteen or twenty friends over to share leftovers. Everybody brings a dish and passes the food around at an enormously long table made of card tables and lawn tables. It's an excuse to get together with friends after the extended family has gone back to Pocatello, to blow off steam and share food that might otherwise go to waste. Everybody is tremendously relaxed, as the expectation and furious preparation is over. What's left is pure sharing and enjoyment.

As a nation of immigrants, we've found it remarkably easy to embrace this particular holiday in the U.S. Though thanksgiving celebrations take place in many other countries, it does feel uniquely American to celebrate our continuing abundance by reveling in it. Edward Winslow, leader of the Plymouth colony, wrote of their lavish yield in 1621, "We are far from want." Many of us around the world could write the very same thing. This year, especially, may we be keenly aware of our good fortune.

:: Susie Hillman

Susie is a Seattle freelance writer and regular contributor to the GoodLetter. [ Check out a few of her favorite goodthings ]

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