President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the previous Friday, and his funeral had been on Monday. The assassin himself had been shot to death on the Saturday between the two days. Our nation was still in a state of shock, and the future seemed more uncertain than it had seemed just a week before. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, was a very different person than Kennedy had been.
I was in the first semester of my sophomore year in college at the time. I cannot say for sure that classes were cancelled during the week before Thanksgiving Day, but they must have been. I probably went home earlier than I’d planned to.
My family, including myself at the time, were staunchly Republican. I am certain that any of us old enough to vote in 1960 had voted for Richard Nixon.
Yet I am also certain we all shared in the sense of loss and sorrow that pervaded the nation and the world: the President of the United States had been murdered in cold blood in front of thousands of well-wishers. The tragedy was a national one, affecting us all. And although I am sure political operatives somewhere quickly went to work figuring out how make the assassination work to their group’s advantage, I remember those days as ones of national lament and loss.
Sadly, such would not be the case today should our president be assassinated. Before the body turned cold, people would be publicizing their opinions on what the death meant and spinning that death to their purposes. With no filters such as the news organizations provided in the 1963, even people whose opinions are not worth a nickel would mount all the platforms they could find to tell the world what they thought. A lot of it would not be pretty. The last thing they’d want is for our nation to mourn our collective loss, to come together to grieve.
Though I cannot remember the details, I am sure our family celebrated Thanksgiving. We had a lot to be thankful for in 1963, and we knew it. How could we not be thankful?
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the first official Thanksgiving Day in 1863, in the midst of our terrible Civil War. It was to be a day of remembrance for those who had died in that war and for the widows and orphans their deaths had created. Give thanks, so that you remember the price many paid to allow you to live the life you are living.
We are in a tough spot in our land and in the world in 2023. I am convinced that it is an even tougher spot than the one we were in 60 years ago. The post World War II order that benefited many and that seemed unshakeable threatens to collapse. Democracy is under attack around the world and here at home by powerful forces that would enthrone dictators in its place. We are being divided one from another by forces we cannot easily see or resist. Fear feeds distrust, hatred, racism, and sexism.
Yet, I will give thanks. Thanks for those who respect the rule of law, for those who work to make that law fair for everyone, for those who serve and advocate for the disenfranchised and marginalized, for those whose labors in a thousand fields keep us safe, fed, housed, and free. For those who are driven not by fear of the future, but by hope for it.
I will give thanks for those who have different notions than I do about how to make our democracy work better for all Americans. I am an American, and they are, too; we just see things differently. Americans are like that.
Giving thanks to a “god” or “gods” is problematical for many of us in 2023. Whether or not we can do that, I suggest we simply give thanks for one another, for all the “anothers” who are Americans with us, even if we do so just for a moment. It would be a moment of unity that might just change for the better the way we treat one another the rest of the year.
So well said. We need to cultivate thanks in these precarious times. Bless you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good wishes!
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