A most American holiday

Parents across the nation this week unpacked backpacks full of art projects that commemorate a certain 1621 celebration that occurred in what is now known as Massachusetts.

Popular legend suggests that happy feast of postharvest thanksgiving was the precursor to today's holiday, but not everyone shares that perspective. A Seattle Public Schools letter to staff members about the holiday got some breathless play on national talk-radio last week. The Nov. 8 letter cautioned them to be sensitive to Native American students, some of whom might view the day not as an occasion to celebrate but to mourn. It quotes from a Native American Web site: "As currently celebrated in this country, 'Thanksgiving' is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship." Neither the legend nor the view that Thanksgiving commemorates "betrayal" fully does justice to this most American of holidays.

The modern Thanksgiving holiday can be traced legally to Oct. 3, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln, his nation cleaved by civil war, signed a proclamation inviting Americans to join him in "a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

Presidents before him signed Thanksgiving proclamations intermittently and different states variously observed such a day, but it was Lincoln's proclamation, just three months after the Battle of Gettysburg, that sparked the annual, official, national tradition.

The proclamation makes no mention of certain immigrants with funny hats, their famous ship or the rock they allegedly landed on.

Rather it was a religious-minded work that acknowledged the challenge "of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity" but nevertheless celebrated what the union had going for it.

"... Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom," the proclamation reads.

Today, in the United States' seventh year in Afghanistan and its fifth in Iraq, it is worth following Lincoln's lead. Too many Americans already have died in Iraq, a war whose suspicious beginnings have divided a nation. Under the guise of federal authority, too many shortcuts have been taken with American civil rights.

But we can be grateful that, since the world-altering 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has not seen another such horror on American soil. Some may disagree with current U.S. military objectives. Still, we can be thankful for our troops and pray their sacrifices are not squandered.

And we must not forget to appreciate our warriors who don't wear uniforms, including librarians fighting for patron privacy and nine fired U.S. attorneys who put principle before politics.

Even in times of war, Thanksgiving is a day not to dwell on past feasts or transgressions. Rather, it is an opportunity, despite our trials, to count our blessings: a flourishing democracy; the right to vote; the chance for the nation to peacefully elect a new president before the next Thanksgiving; a functioning, independent Supreme Court (unlike Pakistan's); and, of course, the cook in the kitchen.

In America in 2007, there are many blessings to count.

Happy Thanksgiving.