Celebrating Thanksgiving this year may be a stretch for our nation. The daily news is filled with recriminations, threats, and violence, with Charlie Kirk’s assassination marking the nadir of the hatred that has infected some Americans. The subsequent political and cultural fractures across our country make it hard to come together, even on so traditional a holiday.

Perhaps remembering some ghosts of Thanksgivings past might lend some perspective. At America’s First Thanksgiving in 1621, for instance, only 53 colonists remained alive, half the number which landed at Plymouth a year earlier. In 1863, in the middle of a terrible civil war, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation setting aside the last Thursday of November as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” World War II brought gasoline

See Full Page