I look forward to Thanksgiving!

I have often said that fall is my favorite time of year.

That is partly because of the cooler temperatures, and the beauty of fall colors, but I especially look forward to Thanksgiving.

Although as a holiday, Thanksgiving is relatively new, I like to think of it as connecting us as families, and connecting us to the traditions of our people across the years. Like Advent and Christmas and Easter, the Thanksgiving season reminds us of some magnificent beliefs and practices that contribute richly to our way of life as a people. A thankful people have a very good chance of being a happy people.

To me, Thanksgiving is a reminder that happiness is produced not so much by the abundance of our goods, but by our learning to appreciate and to experience more fully the blessings we receive.

Thanksgiving has been observed as an o◊cial holiday in the United States since 1863, when a Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In a sense, it is amazing that a people might choose such a time for giving thanks. But, on second thought, I observe that often people are not necessarily most thankful during their times of abundant prosperity; rather, often they become more thankful when they have gone through trying times,but are coming out of tough times with hope and strength and resourcefulness. Often our Thanksgiving traditions look back to the example set by the early Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621.

At harvest time in their fi rst year in the new world, they held three days of thanksgiving, sharing their festival with neighboring Indians who had helped them get established in their new homeland. Survival, a small store of food for the colder months, and hope for opportunities of better days to come, was enough to inspire them to celebrate their blessings and to celebrate in festival. In contrast, sometimes today one hears a people who are blessed richly far beyond what the Pilgrim colonists could ever have imagined, and yet rather than thanksgiving and hope, we hear cynicism, complaint and predictions of gloom.

We have a tradition in our family of trying to “come home for Thanksgiving” each year if possible. This goes back a ways in the Nichols family, and in the Patterson family. Unlike life before the 1940s, when most of the family lived close together, we are rather scattered today. The World War II years tendedto send people all over the country and around the world, and since that time, families have had to be more intentional about putting together their family gatherings and the traditions of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving has become our time to get together as a family. In the 1940s, Thanksgiving was observed at Grandma’s house. Of course Grandpa lived there too! Now, with years having passed, we have become the Grandpa and the Grandma, and it is good to feel that our house is Grandma’s house and home for the family to come to.

Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for great family meals. I understand the Plymouth colonists had duck and venison. That sounds interesting, maybe, except that I can’t say I like duck, and venison takes some really special fi nesse to prepare. Thanksgiving Dinner with turkey and dressing, and maybe ham and roasting ears and sweet potatoes and apple pie, I go for that. Or let’s have some pumpkin pie, or some sweet potato pie with whipped cream topping!

Let’s add in some cranberry sauce, and sourdough bread and grape jelly, and some peach cobbler, and pecan pie. Oh yes, how about some ginger bread made with sorghum molasses?! OK, maybe that’s too much for one meal, but it all sounds larapin’ good!

Coming from farm lifein the 1940s and 1950s, I strongly associate Thanksgiving time with the harvest season. Whereas “city life” tends to disconnect us with the sources of our food, the farm life of the earlier days kept the realities of food production always in direct sight. The harvest time, for farm families, was the time to feel gratifi ed and grateful that the year’s e◊orts were paying o◊, and one could look at the cold weather season with some confidence and assurance of having stored goods to fall back on. One of the basic questions for the year end season was, do we have enough to get through winter? When the cellar shelves were lined with canned goods, when the smokehouse was lined with meats, when the pork was salted down and preserved and the lard was rendered, when the corn crib was full of corn and the barn was filled with hay, and plenty of oats were threshed and bagged for the horses, then a farm family could feel that this is a pretty good year!

We might not have money to speak of, but we felt pretty well o◊.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.