I grew up carefully not observing Thanksgiving. Jehovah's Witnesses are funny about holidays. In each state I've ever visited, any time I meet an ex-Witness, we laugh about this. Somehow Witnesses always squeeze in a turkey dinner, oh, somewhere around the last Friday of each November. "It's when turkeys go on sale," they insist. Now that I'm older and disbelieve in a personal god, Thanksgiving has taken on a whole new lack of meaning. I'll be similarly unimpressed by the celebration of Yahweh's firstborn son next month; the date is wrong, for one thing, and "Christmas" is laden with all sorts of pagan iconography. Bah, humbug.
Which is not to say I don't enjoy the "holy days," I just find my own way to do it. Christmas morning, for example, would not be complete without a screening on TBS--it has to be on TBS, simply has to be, even though I own the DVD--of A Christmas Story. On New Year's Eve, it's important to attend a sexy party. Amanda understands this, we're simply finding it harder to get invited to such festivities now that we're completely devoted to each other. Apparently monogamy inhibits the sexy party vibe, especially when said monogamists are past the age of irresponsible alcohol consumption.
Thanksgiving is America's food orgy. Yes. I can get behind that. Personally, I'm all about the leftover sandwiches on Friday. Is there any culinary achievement more delectable than cramming turkey, stuffing, and gravy between two halves of a semi-homemade biscuit? Clearly not. Wolfgang Puck never made a more satisfying meal. But it seems to me that even for out agnostics like myself, Thanksgiving has to be about something bigger than familial gluttony and football. Surely Thanksgiving is a day to be aware of our good fortune when compared to the rest of the world.
This weekend thousands of people were without power in Thurston County, my county, thanks to early winter weather. Over a hundred car crashes were reported. I, however, was in none of those homes or cars.
A recent USDA study found that one in six Americans, over 50 million people, went hungry last year because they couldn't afford enough food to stay healthy. I wasn't one of those people.
Over two million Americans were homeless last year. I wasn't one of those people.
Millions of Americans have heart disease, lung disease, cancer, or type-2 diabetes. I have none of these potentially fatal illnesses.
Over 30 million Americans have severe disabilities. Despite the predictions of highly reputable doctors during my pubescent years, my spinal condition hasn't risen to that crippling level. More than a quarter of Americans live each day in constant pain, but my back and neck pain limit me only a few times a year.
Each day about 2,600 Americans die suddenly from various accidental or criminal causes. So far this year, none of those people have been members of my family.
Over a million Americans have lost their homes to repossession in 2010. None of these were friends of mine or family.
In the United States, out of every thousand children born, an average of 7.8 children die before they can reach their fifth birthday. Sadly, that makes us only thirty-third on the list of world nations by infant mortality. We're behind such countries as Israel and Slovenia. Iceland, at number one, loses only 3.9 children out of every thousand. Luckily, however, none of those children were in my family--nor in my girlfriend's, though if her nephew had been born ten years ago that likely would not have been the case.
According to the World Health Organization, 2.6 billion people around the world lack a basic latrine, and over a billion people have no healthy drinking water within a kilometer. Consequently, 1.6 million people each year die from diarrheal diseases including cholera. Ninety percent of these people are children.
To put my unimpressive income into perspective, it's in the 90th percentile worldwide. In other words, out of everyone currently alive on Earth, 90% are poorer than I am. Half the world's population gets by on less than two U.S. dollars a day per person. You can check your own income here [1] for a dose of global perspective.
Americans eat an average of 3,330 calories a day, the highest such number in the world. Our average calorie count on Thanksgiving will be at least a thousand points higher. Meanwhile, 15 million children around the world die each year from hunger. Malnutrition is linked to half of all child deaths worldwide.
Am I thankful? You bet. Difference is, I'm thankful to men and women who go to work each day trying to think of how to make me safer, healthier, better-fed, and more comfortable. I'm thankful for excellent doctors and lawyers and teachers and parents. I'm thankful for conscientious politicians, including a president who (and few economists dispute this) averted a national depression. You should be, too. I'm thankful I was born in a country with "socialist" insurance for unemployed and underemployed people, of which I'm currently one. I'm thankful to Amanda for having my back. I'm thankful to you for reading this blog, not to mention my novel, and letting me know you enjoy it. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, something over six thousand Americans currently alive will not do, I'll be thankful to everyone who's working like mad at either cooking and/or paying for my Thanksgiving meal.
Obviously you more spiritual types will offer words of gratitude to your Deity of choice, and I respect that. But I hope you'll also pull some friend or family member aside and thank him or her for making your fragile, precious life just a bit more enjoyable.