Regardless of who won the 2024 election, America has multiple blessings to ponder this November. The motivation behind the Thanksgiving holiday originated in a spirit of gratitude and a unifying celebration of blessings rather than divisive rhetoric. Ironically, the fledgling country called the United States was anything but united when Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a permanent national holiday in 1863. The nation that healed itself of those wounds must come together now in the current partisan divisions and find a common cause. Thanksgiving 2024 is a good day to start.
Turkey Day Comity
Most Americans have suffered lost friendships or bitter arguments with family members over names such as Trump or Biden. Thanksgiving is a choice opportunity to extend a leg of turkey with cranberry sauce as an olive branch. Nothing salves conflicts like a belly full of homemade victuals.
Americans have experienced greater divisions than the current one. Perhaps it is the lack of modern gratitude that seeded the current disunity. If so, a reclamation of thankfulness is the national antidote. The citizenry was bitterly divided – in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 – between colonists and British loyalists. The Vietnam War was a more recent episode in national strife and dissension: Many who experienced that episode of US history claim the nation was far more acrimonious than it has since become over transgender hormones and howls of systemic racism.
Can black and white, gay and straight, and blue and red sit down and break bread together in 2024 for the nation’s annual acknowledgment that all its citizens have much for which to be deeply grateful?
Honest Abe Told the Truth
The first few presidents all declared a national day of Thanksgiving during their terms, but it was Abraham Lincoln who declared America’s first national holiday a permanent annual occurrence with a proclamation in 1863:
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”
Such words of faith sound foreign to most modern ears, but their sentiment has long saturated every facet of American life, including its civil order, its courts, and its federal and state constitutions. Without humility before a higher provider – even if only symbolic, as by secular recognition of this annual reckoning – the nation shutters a vital font from which reconciliation and forgiveness must flow.
Thanksgiving Heals Civic Strife
The American Civil War ended in 1865. Lincoln was assassinated five days later. Two failed attempts on Donald Trump’s life and an election year that threatened social unrest mark a year for which Americans should be profoundly grateful. The note of humility and gratitude best struck for Americans in 2024 was sounded after that mighty Civil War by US President Andrew Johnson in his 1865 Thanksgiving Day proclamation:
“Whereas it has pleased Almighty God during the year which is now coming to an end to relieve our beloved country from the fearful scourge of civil war and to permit us to secure the blessings of peace, unity, and harmony, with a great enlargement of civil liberty; and
“Whereas our Heavenly Father has also during the year graciously averted from us the calamities of foreign war, pestilence, and famine, while our granaries are full of the fruits of an abundant season; and
“Whereas righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to any people:
“Now, therefore, be it known that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do hereby recommend to the people thereof that they do set apart and observe the first Thursday of December next as a day of national thanksgiving to the Creator of the Universe for these great deliverances and blessings.”
A reflection on America’s 2024 provides similar fodder for genuine thanksgiving. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are horrific conflicts, yet both could have been – and could yet become – much more violent. Inflation appears to be taming, or else millions of Americans would face even greater food insecurity. A repeat wave of COVID-19 or some new disease could well have descended upon the nation during the election season. To whom do Americans owe gratitude “for these great deliverances and blessings”?
GK Chesterton observed of gratitude that it requires an object – someone to whom to be grateful. Among past presidents and previous Thanksgiving Day remembrances is an orientation towards a Creator to whom we owe and can express appreciation when things are good, and not just cry out to when things fall apart. To quote Chesterton again: “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
The 2024 election, the lack of escalation of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the fact that no meteor crashed into the planet and ended all life on Earth, and the absence of some new manifestation of disease (human-made or natural) are reason enough to embrace gratitude rather than take such things for granted.
America celebrates Thanksgiving as a national tradition of a collective attitude of gratitude. The legacy of Lincoln is still alive for every American to meditate upon at this year’s dinner table. Perhaps politics and religion are best avoided, but all should nurture thankful hearts for food and a secure place in the world to gather in our homes and enjoy those we love – especially if we disagree with them.
