THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411230030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
The Thanksgiving holiday, which Americans celebrate again today, invariably evokes images of the Pilgrim festival and the happy family around the turkey-graced table of the famous Norman Rockwell painting.
The Pilgrims' stealing of the Thanksgiving show tends to obscure the universality of prayers and rituals of gratitude. Sorrow is the common lot of humankind, but good fortune is not rare, and love endures amid overabundant atrocities.
Nursing grievances and dwelling on misfortune are detructive. Counting blessings and being grateful for them enriches life. Despite the countless afflictions against which we rail, most Americans - there are more than 250 million of us now - have cause for thankfulness.
Sixty years ago, America, along with the rest of the world, was bowed by the Great Depression. Three quarters of us - and we numbered 140 million then - lived in small towns and on farms. But one in five people in the labor force was unemployed, and millions of others worked but two or three days a week.
Fifty years ago, millions of uniformed Americans were engaged in bloody campaigns to defeat Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militaristic Japan, the Axis Powers that had initiated that most murderous war.
Eleven months before the abrupt U.S. entry into the conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal had raised Americans' morale without bettering the economy, projected his vision of ``a world founded upon four essential freedoms'' - freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear.
Costly wars in Korea and Vietnam would follow World War II, as would the debilitating U.S.-Soviet arms race and harrowing nuclear saber-rattling during East-West confrontations.
A world distinguished by the Four Freedoms still eludes us, as Bosnia - the most visible of current horrors - mournfully attests. Many Americans believe our country is on the wrong track, and there's a plenitude of reasons to think so.
But this is a day to think not of all that burdens us but of all that buoys us.
Let us. by CNB