GUEST COLUMN, Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau
As far as holidays go, Thanksgiving is near the top. It’s not quite Christmas (exchanging gifts) or the Fourth of July (exploding gifts), but a day focused on what we’re grateful for is a reminder we should be thankful the rest of the year as well. Plus, you know, all the food.
I’m fortunate to have all the usual appreciations for my family, friends and good health. The complaints I have are minor compared to the circumstances surrounding the first Thanksgiving.
The harvest feast of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621 is regarded as the first celebration of Thanksgiving, though there’s as much myth about the event as fact. What most accounts agree on is there was a celebration with food sometime in the fall. There might have been turkey, but few of the other foods commonly found on tables today existed.
There were no potatoes to mash, the first one having arrived in the same year as the feast but it was several hundred miles away in Virginia. Flour, sugar and butter weren’t available either so pies were out. And football had yet to be invented so it’s impossible to say what they argued about after eating.
Strip away all of the grade-school folklore we learned about the first Thanksgiving and the story provides an even deeper reason to be grateful today. The Pilgrim's celebration was for a good harvest after a brutal first year. The abundant harvest meant the coming winter would be only slightly less harsh.
These are worries most of us can’t fathom today. There was little recourse for the Pilgrims if those first crops had failed. Today, access to food is something we can improve on, but it’s an issue of allocation rather than the existence of food.
We should all give thanks for all the ways the world has drastically changed — mostly for the better — in the last 400 years. By conservative estimates, it cost nearly $4,000 per passenger in today’s dollars and the voyage across the Atlantic took 66 days.
Today anyone with $500 and half a day to spare can make the same trip. Compared to the Pilgrims, we’re time travelers with everyday comforts and conveniences so opulent our ancestors couldn’t have imagined.
No amount of money in 1621 could have purchased most of the luxuries we treat as commodities in our homes. We create light with the flip of a switch. We turn a dial and control the climate. We lift a lever and hot water pours out of the faucet.
Despite our material magnificence, we still seem to find plenty of things to complain about both petty and serious. It’s worth considering that contrast when we sit down with family and friends, whether it’s celebrating Thanksgiving or just getting together to catch up.
I’m grateful for the quality of life we have today, especially compared to the standards of the Pilgrims. I also hope at some point in the next century or two, our descendants view our living standards with both fascination and pity because today’s luxuries become tomorrow’s necessities. Just like adding pies and mashed potatoes to Thanksgiving made it that much better.
