Commentary: Thanksgiving is Thursday. Even in pandemic times, there’s much to be grateful for.
My relationship with Thanksgiving has varied. Of course I loved it as a kid. We enjoyed family gatherings with aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived elsewhere.
What lingers in memory as the Platonic ideal of “Thanksgiving” is a national magazine’s 1953 cover, a Rockwellish painting of my immediate family, plus several neighbors and strangers to make it look more festive. The artist painted it from a photograph he had taken of us in a neighbor’s beautiful old-fashioned dining room. In the foreground, as the family says grace, I’m slyly reaching with one hand to steal an olive and my father’s right hand is extended to warn me that he’ll slap me if I do. (I was young enough to complain to the artist, “But I don’t like olives!”)
In maybe 1956, we watched the Macy’s Parade. The only place open for Thanksgiving Dinner was the Horn & Hardart Automat, delighting us kids, though not Mother. Outside, a ragged man was sleeping one off. Mother bought a wrapped turkey sandwich and left it beside him.
Other Thanksgivings had their own magic; but the story about the pilgrims thanking the Indians seemed less moving as I learned more about how whites treated the tribes.
Later, I cared little about Thanksgiving, and liked being alone. Sometimes someone would invite me, convinced that being alone on Thanksgiving was terrible.
On Thanksgiving 1974, Las Cruces Mayor Bob Munson and his wife, Diana, invited me – and I had a great time.
I’ve spent some Thanksgivings in countries that knew little of it. In 1984, traveling on Thanksgiving in 1984, I saw in the Korea Times two photos whose proximity made an eloquent statement: a starving Ethiopian mother-and-child and a chubby two-year-old awaiting Thanksgiving turkey in Paradise, PA.
The happiest Thanksgiving was the November I met my wife.
More recently we’ve spent Thanksgivings in the home of a poet and an artist, with their family and mutual friends. Everyone contributes. One young man makes irresistible apple pies. Between the main meal and consuming those pies, with ice cream, we walk along the river, gabbing and tossing a football. Not this year. Zoom can’t match that pie!
All of which is to urge everyone: DON’T DO IT!
Please celebrate your wonderful circle of family and friends by helping increase the odds they’ll be around next Thanksgiving. Many people plan to attend Thanksgiving gatherings with at least ten people. At a 10-person gathering one has a 40% chance of running into someone who’s COVID-19-positive. It’s nearer 15% in some coastal cities, 60% in Chicago, and nearly 90% in El Paso. Doña Ana County? 93%!
Masks, staying outdoors, and seating different households separately could decrease the probability of infection. But as we get more festive, perhaps with alcohol, inhibitions weaken. (A lot of babies get conceived that way!) Masks could start feeling silly.
If your family or friends eschew masks, your odds of celebrating Christmas in quarantine or an overtaxed hospital go way up. Tuesday New Mexico’s record 2,112 new cases was hundreds higher than the previous record; then on Thursday, we counted 3,675! A 12-year-old New Mexican died last week. Our county took 77 days to record 20 deaths, 21 days to go from 60-80, then six to reach 100.
Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! We’ve a lot to be grateful for. Let’s keep it that way.