Thanksgiving — the Uniquely American Holiday

A Brief History [The Daily Reckoning] November 23, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Thanksgiving — the Uniquely American Holiday Baltimore, Maryland [Bill Bonner] BILL BONNER Dear Reader, I turned to my trusty assistant, Beirne White, this morning. “Beirne,” I said gravely, “tell me about Thanksgiving in Mississippi.” Beirne proceeded to tell me about a Mississippi bluesman named “Son” House, who lived to be 102 by doing what bluesmen tended to do…chasing bad luck, bad liquor and bad women. “What has that to do with Thanksgiving?” “Nothing,” he replied…whereupon he drew on the resources generously provided by Britannica.com, formerly of Chicago, lately of cyberspace, to get me the research I requested. In a country where roots meant almost nothing, where people were ready to pick up and move at the drop of a hat… Thanksgiving served to provide a unified, national myth. A Yankee Holiday Beirne hails from Mississippi. And while Mississippians will sit down with the rest of the nation…and tuck into their turkeys with equal relish…perhaps only substituting Bourbon Pecan pie for the sweet potato or pumpkin pie enjoyed in Maryland…it was not always so. Somewhere deep in the most primitive part of his medulla oblongata, the part of the brain where race memories are stored, Beirne resists Thanksgiving. It is, after all, a Yankee holiday. In the middle of the War Between the States, both sides would proclaim days of “thanksgiving,” following the progress of the war as we now follow the progress of the stock market. After each of the first and second battles of Bull Run — which sent the Yankees fleeing back to Washington — the Confederates proclaimed days of thanksgiving. But it was Lincoln’s day that stuck. Declared after the battle of Gettysburg — the last great Napoleonic charge of military history — Thanksgiving was set for the third Thursday in the month of November, commemorating the Northern victory. Beirne doesn’t say so, but this fact must stick in his craw. It doesn’t help that the original celebration took place in Massachusetts. And that it was hosted by a dour bunch of Puritans, who probably wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a good dinner if their lives depended on it. But they certainly had a lot to be thankful for. [You have (1) item on hold at our warehouse:]( Item #: [51987]( Status: On hold Value: Approx. $300 Claim by date: 11/26 at 11:59 PM Our Head of Customer Experience will show you what you need to do. [Click Here Now]( “Witch-burners and Infant-damners” As the Wall Street Journal reminds us annually, they nearly exterminated themselves in typical Yankee fashion — by wanting to boss each other around. They had arrived in Massachusetts by accident and bad seamanship, intending to settle in the more hospitable climate of Virginia, which had been colonized more than 10 years before. Once in Massachusetts, they proceeded to set up such a miserable community that surely most of them, had they lived, would have longed to return to England. The Soviets could have learned from their example and spared themselves 70 years of misery. Only after the “witch-burners and infant-damners” abandoned their communal form of organization, and allowed people to work for themselves, did the colony have a prayer of survival. No Baggage but Good Manners and Empty Bellies But victors write the history books. And now this precarious celebration by a feeble group of religious zealots has turned into the most American holiday. After Appomattox, the South was helpless. Its natural leaders, the plantation aristocrats, were either dead, bankrupted and/or discredited. Many of them went to Northern cities, like New York or Baltimore, where, Mencken tells us, they “arrived with no baggage, save good manners and empty bellies.” They enriched the North. But back home, they were sorely missed. “First the carpetbaggers,” says Mencken, “ravaged the land…and then it fell into the hands of the native white trash…” Scars of war can take a long time to heal. But [150] years later, the South is the most economically and culturally robust part of the nation in many ways. [[CHART] Could Inflation Hit 20%+ In 2023?]( [Click here for more...]( Take a close look at this scary chart pictured here… What you see is the money supply in America… And as you can see, the number of dollars in circulation has exploded in the last few years. In fact, more than 80% of all dollars to ever exist have been printed since just 2020 alone! Which is why some say inflation could soon explode even higher than it is now, to 20% or more. And if you’re at or near retirement age you must take action now to protect yourself… [Click Here To Learn How]( A Unifying Myth Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in 1931. Through the Depression, and then WWII, Thanksgiving grew in importance. In a country where roots meant almost nothing, where people were ready to pick up and move at the drop of a hat, where there were huge differences in what people thought and how they lived, Thanksgiving served to provide a unified, national myth… most popularly expressed in Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving cover for the Saturday Evening Post. Roots mean more in Mississippi than they do in California. “No man is himself,” said Oxford, Mississippi’s most celebrated alcoholic, “he is the sum of his past.” Unlike so many other American writers of the 20th century, Faulkner stayed home. The forward to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture has a passage from Faulkner, saying: “Tell about the South. What’s it like there? What do they do there? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?” Even in Faulkner’s Mississippi, Thanksgiving is now part of everyone. Where Beirne goes…it goes too. And so, all over the world, Americans, gathering in small groups, like pilgrims on distant shores, celebrate the holiday (if not on the actual day…perhaps the weekend following…as we will do.) Thanksgiving in France This can require a little ingenuity. Americans in France have to search for the ingredients. Pumpkins are hard to pronounce — citrouilles — and hard to find. Cranberry sauce is unknown. But my mother discovered a store in Paris specializing in American groceries, named “the Real McCoy.” She hastened thither yesterday, and brought back canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce and peanut butter. Thanks to this outpost of American culinary supplies, we will be able to have a very typical Thanksgiving dinner when we slide our chairs up to the table on Sunday. Art Buchwald has translated the Thanksgiving story for the French, deftly turning Captain Miles Standish into Le Capitaine Kilometre Deboutish. But no one has refashioned American Thanksgiving recipes for the metric measuring cups here in France. My wife, Elizabeth, descendant of the Puritan fathers…former resident of New York…a Yankee, in other words…and my mother — issuing from Southern Maryland tobacco farmers and the French bourgeoisie – will do their best. And we will be thankful. Regards, Bill Bonner for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: We have [an item of considerable value]( on hold for you in our warehouse. An item that you could have been entitled to claim as part of a giveaway offer put on by Jim Rickards just a few weeks ago. Valued at nearly $300 we don’t think claiming this [special item]( was an opportunity you wanted to miss. That’s why our head of customer service recorded a [quick 2 minute message]( with all of the details… Including what this item is and what you need to do to claim it. But please hurry. Because by November 26th at exactly 11:59 PM we will plan to clear a large portion of these items from our warehouse. You’ll want to have claimed yours before then. [Click here to see how to claim yours now.]( Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Bill Bonner] [Bill Bonner]( is the founder of Agora Inc. and cofounder of The Daily Reckoning. He is also a three-time New York Times best selling author. His most recent project is his investment newsletter, The Bill Bonner Letter. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. 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