Thanksgiving ain’t what it used to be

This year, count blessings, not entitlements

By Josiah Prendergast
From the November 2005 Print Edition

Once upon a time it wasn’t a matter of partisan politics to support the troops. Liberating people — in a war that wasn’t directly ours to fight — was given reasonable time for reconstruction, and the American people weren’t so concerned with the availability of the iPod nano. Sure, it’s a long time since World War II, but does that mean we have to push so far beyond having true thanksgiving?

Invariably, we all take the luxuries of being American for granted. I know that every day I am not grateful enough for the roof over my head, the laptop at which I yell when Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball doesn’t load quickly enough, and recently the quality hospitals that serve us. However, every time I step into my gas-guzzling, American-made SUV I consider how my grandfather was able to leave the legacy he did — hard work.

I often look at holidays and find that they are a mockery of the intention. It’s not December, so I won’t go into the secularization of Christmas, but Thanksgiving is now commonly associated first with food, and second with football. Nearly everyone of us are most concerned with whether we get the white meat or the dark meat off the turkey and watching the Dallas Cowboys lose to anyone (I’m non-discriminatory).

Seriously, the day is a joke and the concept of hard work in this nation has become equally frivolous. We pride ourselves on being a nation built on grit and toil, but in our maturation and young wealth we now whistle a different tune. We substituted a welfare system for work, complain about unemployment, and wouldn’t dream of working any harder than our voice can whine. Many support an open-border policy with Mexico by citing the “need” for those workers. The real message is: If you are white, what the hell are you doing in the fields?! Here’s a government check. If you’re black, that’s far too much of a throwback to the times of slavery. Here’s a government check. Hispanic? You’ve been here a while? Get out of those fields! Here’s a government check. And the common assumption is that all of the Asian inhabitants are either on campus or making money. But if not, a government check for you, too.

One might think that the very least a person could say is, “Thank you for considering me too good for that work, but not too good for your money.” Not a common response. Our society is so saturated with a sense of entitlement that being sincerely thankful is practically a faux pas. There are people still talking about the impact slavery reparations would bring to a statistically low socioeconomic group; 150 years after the fact, the idea is that money must precede education, employment, and success. Allow me to present a personal anecdote.

My grandfather represents the expectations that were once held in this nation, a far cry from the gluttony of today. He grew up on a farm during the Great Depression; his father worked at least two jobs to keep food on the table. He joined the naval forces in World War II and attended Cal after he served, paying his way with the paychecks he saved while in the Navy. He lived in Richmond, having to catch a ride with the trucks going to Berkeley each day; BART simply wasn’t an option. Married with two children, my grandfather graduated top of his class with a civil-engineering degree. A visionary and a nose-to-the-grindstone worker, he returned to the Central Valley to work.

He worked until just before he passed on at the age of 80. Over his lifetime he built approximately 10,000 homes and apartments, provided the land for two Catholic churches and arranged for California State University Fresno to have a state-of-the-art tennis complex, among numerous other accomplishments. Perhaps these results are too much to expect of the average man, but his resolve isn’t.

My grandfather represents an ideal so right in his day and so absent in mine — service and hard work. Imagine the possibilities if we didn’t expect the government to provide employment for us, if we actually took advantage of the opportunity of free public education. Call me out of touch, but when I see kids caught up in gangs, it isn’t because they lack the time to put in more effort at school or the capacity to do something more with their lives.

As soon as this society stops telling people that we’ll pay their way because they lost the game before it started, we will have something for which we can be truly grateful. I’m grateful — I really am — but to a point. It’s a matter of being thankful for what I have and expecting others to be the same. Perhaps you should take a ride in my grandfather’s car to see where I’m coming from; then again, it might be just another gas guzzler to you.

Either way, make a point of having thanksgiving in general, especially if you don’t plan to have any on Thanksgiving.

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