Thanksgiving Was Born From America’s Struggles

Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom From Want” is perhaps the most famous artistic depiction of an American Thanksgiving, showing a family joyfully gathered round an enormous turkey. For Rockwell, the abundance of the meal was the point, reflecting the ideal Franklin Roosevelt named in his famous “Four Freedoms” speech. Equally notable is the tranquility of the family gathering. There seems nary a disagreement among them; political divisions appear entirely absent.

This year, it’s easy to wonder if Rockwell’s Thanksgiving has any relevance to our own. Soaring inflation has made big dinners less easy to afford, and many family gatherings will feature acrimonious discussions about the state of the country. In 2022, can we still gather together in simple gratitude?

In fact, these challenges don’t make our moment unique. The Thanksgiving we celebrate today evolved during periods of material struggle, political division and terrible loss. The lesson of American history is that national difficulties don’t detract from the meaning of Thanksgiving; they are the very grounding of gratitude.

The Thanksgiving story begins, of course, with the Pilgrims. The English Protestants who arrived at Provincetown in 1620 were obsessed with the Hebrew Bible, seeing themselves as another Israel journeying to a promised land. In his book “Making Haste From Babylon,” historian Nick Bunker describes how when the Pilgrims came ashore they recited passages from Psalm 107, which “speaks about the wilderness of the Sinai, about danger and deliverance, about the journey of the Israelites across the Red Sea, and about the duty to give thanks when the exodus is complete.”

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal.