So one criticism among many I’ve gotten is that I’ve stopped giving edifying messages about holidays and stuff.
That’s why I’m delaying my commentary on the Cruz surge to say something about Thanksgiving.
In the past, I’ve recommended that we give thanks for what we’ve received from the Puritans on Thanksgiving. That includes our egalitarian idealism, many of our more-participatory political institutions, our concern for good government really oriented toward the public welfare, public provision for the poor and needy, our devotion to the idea that liberal education be for everyone, our refusal to be indifferent to the souls of our fellow citizens and creatures, our dedication to the virtues that produce stable families, and maybe most of all our confidence that the spirit of religion is not only compatible with but actually fuels the spirit of political liberty.
Today, I might want to emphasize that the Puritans are the first and some ways most potent source of the Augustinian idea in America that both work and leisurely study are for us all. What was wrong with Socrates is that he didn’t practice the virtue of charity. And what’s wrong with turning all of life into the techno-imperatives of efficiency and productivity is that we have no time and no place for living in the truth about who each of us is as a being with a singular destiny under God. Surely we’re not all born to be philosophers, but education for us all is or should be more than techno-vocational. Senator Rubio, please get more Puritanical.
What’s wrong with the Puritans might be reduced to the inclination to turn even sin into a crime. That’s why at one time we were distinguished by being prohibitionists when it comes to strong drink. And today we’re Puritanical and prohibitionist to an often ridiculously intrusive degree when it comes to health and safety. We’re also Puritanical and prohibitionist when it comes to scrubbing our speech squeaky clean when it comes to anything that might suggest unjust opinions or even inegalitarian insensitivity. The original Puritans, of course, were very judgmental on many moral fronts; we’re now very judgmental when it comes to judgmentalism.
We should, of course, resolve to be more Puritanical in some ways and less in others.
Now I would like to share with you a slightly updated set of reflections I wrote a couple of years ago on the truth that the greatness of Thanksgiving is in what it is not.
1. There is no giving of presents. That, I think, is a relief all around. Thanks can be given without adding a bribe more costly than a pie.
2. There are no parties, with the resulting pressure to throw the biggest and best one. Not to mention the anxiety about being invited to the parties that count.
3. There’s no mistletoe and no kissing at midnight. So no feeling of being unkissed and therefore unloved. You don’t have to kiss a stranger or someone you can’t stand just to avoid looking pathetic.
4. There are no costumes. Well, almost no costumes. Schoolkids occasionally have to dress up as Pilgrims or Indians or turkeys. One good thing about our Puritanical political correctness is that dressing up as characters from our past is now regarded as highlighting our legacy of oppression.
5. There’s no pressure to really dress up, to look “alluring.” For once, the point of dinner is mainly to eat — a lot. And so everyone knows, tight fitting clothes won’t “work.” People come to eat and talk, not to look at the fancy decorations with which you’ve adorned yourself or your table.
6. “I’m being slutty because it’s Thanksgiving” is a particularly disgusting thing to say because it makes no sense. The self-indulgence of Thanksgiving isn’t sexual, and it’s likely to do the opposite of putting someone in a promiscuously amorous mood.
7. Thanksgiving is surely our least erotic holiday. Women, of course, often complain that men fall asleep right after sex. The sleep-inducing chemical found in turkey more or less guarantees that on this one day everyone falls asleep before. And in any case, the general behavior of men on Thanksgiving — overeating and slouching around on the couch watching games — makes them pretty darn unattractive. Plus there are plenty of kids around.
8. Thanksgiving might be our least Dionysian or unreservedly joyous holiday. It’s not about getting drunk, and it’s hard for alcohol to have its desired effect in a full stomach. It’s not about dancing or even singing. The few Thanksgiving tunes we have are pretty lame.
9. Thanksgiving is not a patriotic holiday. Presidents try to make it such with their meaning-laden proclamations. But nobody reads them. Thanksgiving is not that all much about America.
10. Thanksgiving is not all that particularly a religious holiday. Well, it’s the one day presidents can wax somewhat religiously in said proclamations. But they do so in the boring mode of the reserved “ceremonial Deism” invented or perfected by George Washington. People are asked to count their blessings, which is not something we busy and anxious Americans are ordinarily good at. But we’re pretty pro-choice on whether we attribute our blessings to God.
11. Thanksgiving is much less of a commercial stimulus package than the other holidays of the “holiday season.” Grocery stores and airlines excepted, of course. But, hey, you gotta eat, and everyone has to go home once in a while.
12. So, we might say, Thanksgiving is mainly about family and, to a lesser extent, friends. It’s about being at home with those you know and love. From that view, a Darwinian might say it’s the holiday that celebrates who we are as members of the most “eusocial” of species.
13. The homelessness that Thanksgiving is supposed to counter is not the existential homelessness described by Pascal or Sartre. It’s not the homelessness that causes us to long for regression into the womb. Or, for that matter, for a personal savior. It’s the homelessness of a person separated from or otherwise deprived of family and friends. And so it’s about gratitude for being with — knowing and loving with — those emotionally closest to us. It can also be gratitude for having found a new friend and being taken into a new home. My favorite Thanksgiving movie right at the moment is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in which the Steve Martin character experiences the first kind of gratitude, enhanced by his gift to the John Candy character of the second kind. It’s the loneliness often captured by John Candy in film — and by Roy Orbison in song —that’s overwhelmed by Thanksgiving.
14. The greatness of Thanksgiving is that it doesn’t aspire to greatness, but only to the shared experiences that make living worth living for each one of us.