Beyond the Elements of Style

I have to admit that when it comes to Thanksgiving, I’m a bit of a bah-humbug sort of person. I don’t celebrate the holiday and it makes me vaguely uncomfortable, as you’ll see in a moment.

But I do want to say that taking time off to acknowledge everything for which we are thankful is an excellent idea, and one we should implement all year, not just on one day. I’m grateful for so many things and many people: the growth of my company, Customline Wordware, and for all my wonderful clients who make it possible; for my sales team, headed up by Julia Blackburn, and mostly, my business partner, friend, and husband, Paul Cézanne. I’m grateful to my publishers for continuing to put my words out there, and for my literary agent, Philip G. Spitzer for enabling that to happen. I’m grateful to my readers (“if a writer falls in the forest…”) who mean the world to me: I don’t know who all of you are, but I thank you!

As for the rest … well, I explain my attitude best in this op-ed I wrote that appeared in last week’s Provincetown Banner:

Thanksgiving, Provincetown-Style

Having decided not to travel for the holiday (the sanest course of action when one considers how difficult flying anywhere has become), I found myself recently wondering how to spend it. While I’m totally onboard with the general sentiment of the time – it’s an incontestably Good Thing to stop and feel gratitude for all we have and all we are, and an even Better Thing to thank people who have been good to us this year – I’ve never been able to feel right about celebrating a holiday that has its historical roots in a genocide.

So how does one mark the day?

At one time the Wampanoag did a sort of anti-Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation, but I’ve not been able to find anything out about it in recent years. And while one could of course go to one of the local restaurants and gorge oneself, it seems a little pointless. So I was delighted when the solution was suggested to me: perhaps I should celebrate Thanksgiving exactly like the first Europeans did!

You don’t have to go far to research the roots of the holiday: the museum up at the Provincetown Monument tells the story. The Pilgrims, we learn via a diorama there, were close to starvation and despair when they suddenly found some corn! It was carefully stacked and well preserved, apparently just waiting for them. They rejoiced over that discovery, took the corn back to their ships, and thus famously survived the winter.

So here’s my plan: on Thanksgiving morning, I’m going to break into the Grand Union grocery store over on Shankpainter Road. I’m going to proceed to the canned vegetables aisle (it is, after all, past the season for fresh vegetables) and take the corn I find stacked there. Surely the store owners and the local police will understand, just as no doubt the rightful owners of that original harvest did, right? Stealing is, apparently, a holiday tradition.

Okay, so I’m not going to really do it, but it’s a tempting thought. After all, as long as you get to write the history books, you can – apparently – do whatever you want. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving indeed, on this and on every day! Being grateful puts us all … beyond the elements of style!