ANGELO LYNN

Back in 1621, history tells us that 50 Pilgrims shared a three-day harvest feast with 90 Wampanoag Indians. Venison, duck, goose, oysters, lobster, eel, and fish were likely served, alongside pumpkins and cranberries, but not turkey, pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce. Such are trivial facts among what has become a culturally significant occasion. The original feast was also shrouded by years of death, through conflict and disease, suffered by Native Americans after the English began to settle the East Coast.

Two hundred and forty years later, President Abraham Lincoln, on Oct. 3, 1863, would declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. Lincoln’s decision to proclaim the national holiday, according to some historians, was an attempt to bridge animosities between the north and south, as well as Native American communities further west, during the Civil War. 

Today, 402 years after that iconic feast with the Wampanoag Indians, we more aptly use the occasion to give thanks for what we have than to “celebrate” any specific myth-laden story.

It’s poignant to think, nonetheless, of the two significant events surrounding this holiday and today’s conflicted times. The Pilgrims arrival was a harbinger of untold grief among East Coast Native Americans, and the Civil War continues to be the deadliest of all conflicts in the United States history with an estimated death toll of 620,000 between 1861-1865.

Today, as death and tragedies mount in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in response to the murderous attack by Hamas on Israel, and as Ukraine continues to repel Russia’s invasion of its sovereignty with high death tolls on each side, we take this moment to shine a light on the bright side and, as Maya Angelou encouraged, “be present in all things and grateful for all things.” That’s not meant to be grateful for the anguish caused by conflict and tragedy — which seems to be a condition of mankind’s history — but to recognize and live for all the things we have.

For avid news followers, the bad news so often outweighs the good that it’s not always easy to come up with a list, but it helps to take the time to write it down. For this newspaper, we’re grateful for:

• Communities throughout Addison County who govern with an honest and sincere effort to serve the greater good of each town and school district. That’s easier said than done, and much thanks is owed to each citizen who serves.

• Nonprofits, churches, schools and businesses who go beyond their routine practices to make the towns in which we live that much safer, stronger, vivacious and joyous.

• To those remarkable individuals who standout as community leaders, large and small, from community-wide and statewide recognition to leaders of clubs, organizations, first responders, fire departments, and select committees. Each person who takes on that extra task plays an important role in making the village stronger.

• To our readers for caring enough to stay informed and become diligent and active citizens within their towns and school districts, and for contributing their views through letters-to-the-editor, community forums and other submissions.

• To an active arts community that presents hundreds of events and entertainment venues every week of the year, and to an athletic community that provides foundational programs for student growth and development, and thousands of hours of conversation for parents, family and friends — part of the glue that helps hold communities together through thick and thin.

From this writer’s perspective, and for most of us, family and friends top the list, but to dive a bit deeper, we’re grateful too for those we work most closely with each day, and in clubs and associations, and for those friends who have our deepest confidence.

We’re grateful, too, for the democratic structure that allows for unrestricted thinking and the ability to put thoughts into constructive action. Going deeper, we’re grateful for the tradition of civil disobedience as first outlined by Henry David Thoreau, and for Martin Luther King’s devoted allegiance to nonviolent protests as a way to affect lasting change.

Particularly in these times, the six principles of King’s notion of nonviolence are worth reviewing, three of which are: one can resist evil without resorting to violence; nonviolence seeks to win the friendship and understanding of the opponent, not to humiliate him; and that the nonviolent resister must have “deep faith in the future,” stemming from the conviction that, according to King, “the universe is on the side of justice.”

One could take a cynical view of those principals and ask, where did that get Mr. King? Or we can be positive and work hard to protect two essential values, currently threatened, that have been the foundation of this country: trust in our fellow Americans and belief in a better tomorrow. To be truly thankful this Thanksgiving, having a deep faith in that future is key.

Angelo Lynn