Republican politicians at both state and national levels are sneering at the whole idea of putting their families’ protection from a deadly disease ahead of their annual can of cranberry jelly. The latest head of Trump’s coronavirus task force is even encouraging people to get together with elderly relatives because “it may be their last Thanksgiving.” Which is almost certain, if some thoughtless family member delivers them a dose of COVID-19.
No one is excited about missing time with family members. Sure, not everyone is exactly thrilled about spending time with that uncle—you know the one—but that doesn’t mean it’s not rough to think about going a year before you see grandma, or that cousin who makes you laugh, or your sister’s new baby. So let’s not. The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest calamity in more than a century, so let’s treat it that way.
By greeting the end of the pandemic with another National Day of Thanksgiving.
Though we often think of Thanksgiving as something that involves people with buckles on their shoes and Native Americans caught in a golden moment before one is about to conduct the next phase in a war of genocide against the other, the holiday itself doesn’t go back as far as you might think. Various states and localities celebrated some form of Thanksgiving, on different dates, for a longer period, but it was in 1863, smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the final Thursday of November would be a national Day of Thanksgiving.
The date of that first Thanksgiving happened to fall on Nov. 26, the same date as that most venerated American holiday, Evacuation Day. That’s the date that British forces withdrew from New York City and was one of several days that were put forward as representing the end of the War of Independence. It was a big deal at that point, but Thanksgiving immediately became a national tradition, and Evacuation Day dwindled into a sporadic celebration that is occasionally resurrected in New York … only to fade away again.
Second Thanksgiving should be, like the first one, official. Joe Biden should haul out a proper, non-Sharpie pen and affix his name to an order setting aside a date for Americans to remember the hundreds of thousands who fell, recall the shared hardships of the pandemic, and celebrate the triumph of medical science and reason in restoring the nation. Naturally, none of this should happen immediately upon the release of the first vaccine. But it also shouldn’t wait for COVID-19 to be declared extinct. For a number of reasons, unlike smallpox, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is likely to be around for the foreseeable future.
The date should be set at a point where the cases of COVID-19 are not just declining, but where it’s clearly not just a pause before another surge; a point where vaccines are readily available to the general public, and when testing shows that the disease has genuinely been pressed into a corner. That point could come as early as March, assuming vaccines roll out in quantity around the end of the year. But it’s more likely to come a few months later. Still, let’s hope for that April-May zone, because there’s a real lack of federal holidays in that long slide between President’s Day and Memorial Day, and it would be nice to fill that gap with another excuse to get everyone together that doesn’t fall right on top of another big holiday.
Whenever it happens—and it will happen—we need to be there. Second Thanksgiving. And we need to do it right—with parades, a lot of flag waving, and tears … endless, chest-ripping sobs of sadness, anger, relief, and joy.
And we need to eat, dammit. Every good holiday deserves a meal. Rather than pick another official animal to mangle, I’m suggesting right here that for Second Thanksgiving, the side dishes get their chance to shine in the foreground. Mac and Cheese? You know you’re the real reason we come together. Yeast rolls? Give me half a dozen. With butter. Let there be casseroles. Let there be potatoes cooked every way a potato can be cooked. Let there be pie.
Make it real. Spread the word: Second Thanksgiving. Let’s not just set aside a day to commemorate the end of the COVID-19 crisis, but the end of everything that made 2020 such a horror.
I will be there, with friends, with family, with everyone I can drag in. Start planning now for how you’re going to decorate. What you’re going to fix. How you’re going to mourn. How you’re going to praise. How you’re going to sing.
And don’t forget the pie.