Gobble, gobble

The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Columbia University Press, 1983, describes Thanksgiving Day as a "national holiday in the U.S. commemorating the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony in 1621. The first national Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by Pres. Washington for Nov. 26, 1789. Pres. Lincoln revived the custom in 1863. In 1941 Congress decreed that Thanksgiving should fall on the fourth Thursday of November. The customary turkey dinner is a reminder of the four wild turkeys served at the Pilgims' first Thanksgiving feast."

Modern political correctness would have us eschew that idyllic story, and accept the depressing version that says our ancestors brought disease and crime to the New World, and decimated the native population and the natural resources. Not only because it's greatly exaggerated, but because most or our ancestors didn't come here until over 250 years later, let the guilt go. Neither you nor your forebears killed any Indians or buffalo, cut down any trees, nor enslaved anyone. However, if any of them did, it was long ago, and in those days, it was, as Whoopi said about dogfighting, "a part of the prevailing (southern) culture."

Happy Thanksgiving.