Michael Swickard
Thanksgiving is odd holiday for some people. At their Thanksgiving dinner table they say, “I am thankful for all of my blessings. Incidentally, I deserved them.”
Not me. I always feel like a pilgrim at the first celebration. The pilgrims were close to being out of food when the Indians arrived. They did not deserve the gifts the Indians brought but were grateful because otherwise they might not have survived the winter.
Many times the gifts I have received came as a surprise. Some were not deserved. Not that I refused them; rather, I appreciated them all the more because they were gifts. People do not have to be overly humble, only appreciative of how much given to them is not quid pro quo.
In sixth grade my class was designated to give the Thanksgiving play for the school that year. It was the traditional, “Our Forefather’s First Thanksgiving.” Mrs. Hodgeson assigned the parts in the play by the “you, you and you” selection method. I scrunched down in my seat as far as possible and nevertheless was the second part chosen. It was a speaking part. I shivered. My dear teacher felt that each child should have a chance to be on center stage in an auditorium full of parents and loved ones as a growth opportunity.
My buddies and I viewed the play differently. We thought we were going to slide through sixth grade. We knew the Christmas play was coming, but we had been typecast so often as shepherds and sheep that we thought we were safe. Our exposure to a chance of disgrace and dishonor was brief.
Not the Thanksgiving play. All of us slackers had received substantial speaking parts. Mrs. Hodgeson made it clear she considered it an honor to be given a speaking part, and, if we ever wanted to get out of sixth grade, we had better apply ourselves to learning the dialog.
My mother was thrilled. “Our son the thespian,” she wrote to my dad who was on assignment at a distant military base. I thought to myself, I bet he is glad he does not have to make a fool of himself at some dumb Thanksgiving play.
One day during a dreary rehearsal, when the normally kind and gentle Mrs. Hodgeson was trying to decide which child to kill first, we had a “teachable moment of learning” that is the object of education but is missing most of the time. It happened when someone playing an Indian bearing gifts ad-libbed, “Hey, why should we Indians give you pilgrims any food? You are just going to take over the entire country and get rid of us Indians. You did not do anything to deserve this food, so just forget it.”
Mrs. Hodgeson stopped to rehearsal and said to that child, “Do you deserve everything your parents give you, or are there times when it is really a gift?” The child looked sheepish, perhaps in preparation for the Christmas play. I realized it was true for me. Much of what my parents had given me was not tied to deserving, it was simply a gift.
The night of the Thanksgiving play was the day before Thanksgiving. I remembered most of my part and only fell over a chair once. Near the end of the play I was, for the first time, enjoying being on stage. As I looked out over the crowd, I finally found where my mom was sitting. There was a pang of regret that year because my father was not going to be with us this holiday.
But as I looked out at my mother I noticed that sitting next to her in his military uniform was my dad, who had gotten home. I waved, forgetting that my character was not supposed to wave at the audience. My dad smiled at me and waved back. The next day we had a great Thanksgiving feast while I relived my brief moment in the theatre spotlight to everyone who came to our house.
I hope you have received things for which you are thankful. Not deserving gifts, rather, surprise gifts. They make for the very best Thanksgivings.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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