Cover of The Very First Thanksgiving: Pioneers on the Rio Grande by Bea Bragg, illustration by Antonio Castro.

A line from the movie Bull Durham reminds me of Thanksgiving. Remember when the character Annie paraphrases the poet’s opinion of baseball: “Walt Whitman said, ‘I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.’”

Just as Whitman, or the screenwriter quoting him, singled out baseball,  Thanksgiving’s theme singles it from all other Days Off. It’s not directly associated with a battle or birthday. You can look it up.

When you spend a day being thankful, that’s a day you haven’t spent wanting, needing, and feeling bad about what you haven’t done. It can be a day or a moment of repair and reflection. I wonder if mental health therapists ever want to remind their clients: “Think for a moment of all you have to be thankful for.” Maybe that’s not helpful in solving a major disorder, but it couldn’t hurt. I know lonely people who put me to shame with their ability to be thankful and optimistic. I know people of modest means who are first to offer aid and help to others.

Thanksgiving crosses all the lines: ethnic, racial, religious, financial. It wasn’t always so. George Washington started it, Thomas Jefferson stopped it, Abraham Lincoln restored it, and Franklin Roosevelt moved it. (It was later moved back.)

My mother took my family to Plymouth, Massachusetts for Thanksgiving in 1993, and it was memorable in ways she never intended. We attended a community dinner and toured the Plimoth Plantation, an outdoor living history site that tells the story of the Pilgrims and the Native Wampanoag.  My youngest son was horrified when one of the Plantation’s Pilgrim actors wielded an axe and chopped off a duck’s head during dinner preparations.  Nor will we forget the blank look on a tour guide’s face after he asked my mother where she was from. “The Permian Basin,” she said to a clueless group of Bostonians. And on the plane home, from my husband:  “Christmas is next month…is your mother taking us to Bethlehem?” Plimoth Plantation was our last holiday-themed field trip.

Maine, Virginia, Florida, and Texas all claim Thanksgiving traditions that predate the Pilgrim feast in Massachusetts. Texas pioneers celebrated in Palo Duro Canyon in 1541.  In 1598 near present-day El Paso, an expedition of 400 European settlers and their Native American guests feasted along the Rio Grande.  Whatever the backstory, Thanksgiving’s place in history is more nuanced and interesting than simply being the official start of the Giving and Getting Season.

To rephrase the paraphrase, I think Thanksgiving is a great holiday—it’s our holiday. An American holiday. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.