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Thank you very much

I’m entirely sympathetic to retailers’ anxieties about revenue in the third straight year of this economic downturn, at a time when the policies of President Barack Obama and the Democrats seem to be making little headway. Perhaps that extra ad, that extra-long Christmas retail season, that extra store display will help keep a business afloat and workers employed. But it seems overkill to get started before we even take down the Halloween decorations.

This is all especially puzzling since Thanksgiving doesn’t seem like a hard sell. Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, stuffing, pumpkin pie and the rest are a pretty good spread. Even though there’s no baseball, there’s plenty of America’s other favorite sport for those who are so inclined. Plus, Thanksgiving represents a nice break halfway between fall break and winter break in the Princeton calendar.

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On a more meaningful level, Thanksgiving commemorates a piece of shared American history. A group of religious dissenters fled the turmoil of 17th-century England for the promise of the New World. They persevered through one ship problem (remember the Speedwell?) and one long winter, with mortality on the order of 50 percent and little but their faith in God and some help from Native Americans. As they prepared to settle into a new land, they wrote a compact to guarantee that the rule in their colony would always be majoritarian.

The Thanksgiving story itself isn’t terribly popular with modern progressives. It’s part of a tragic pattern of English settlers dispossessing Indians from their lands through disease and war. Indeed, along with slavery, white treatment of Indians ranks as one of the great tragedies of American history. Moreover, the Pilgrims were men and women of faith who saw God’s active presence in their lives. Needless to say, religion is not exactly in vogue in many circles today. For the sake of argument, however, I’ll bracket the historical value of the holiday.

Thanksgiving couldn’t come at a better time. Simply put, November weather deadens the soul, as cold and darkness set in around us and the ground is coated with frost instead of dew. Rain is neither the refreshing shower of spring nor the majestic thunderstorm of summer, but instead a dreary, interminable affair. Even the crisp air of October retreats in the face of the sharp, stinging bite of a November wind. Thanksgiving is thus a welcome celebration, filling homes with families and rooms with light in an otherwise gloomy month.

On a deeper level, Thanksgiving is a reminder to a busy world that gratitude is a worthwhile exercise. At Princeton, it’s easy to just charge through semester after semester, head down amid papers, exams and problem sets. We grumble about grade deflation and tough professors, and that is often the extent of our reflection.

Even on campus, we could do a little more thanking. So many little things are truly remarkable here, whether it’s an exceptional lecture or a formative conversation. Consider the atmosphere during freshman week or Freshman Parents Weekend, when people come to campus with fresh eyes and take none of it for granted. One man from Shanghai asked me for directions a few months ago, and before he walked away, he told me, “You have a very beautiful campus.”

I can’t help but wonder whether the Princeton schedule detracts from the holiday. With a little flexibility, we could easily start school one day earlier in the fall and then cancel classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The choice facing professors — lose a class period if you cancel, risk a half-empty room if you don’t — isn’t consistent with our educational mission. And with an extra day, Thanksgiving will no longer be a travel nightmare on Wednesday, followed by another trek just two days later.

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On Thursday, we can offer gratitude to God or secular gratitude toward others. Regardless, we should give thanks for the opportunities and achievements of the past year — both those of our own making and those enabled by others. It’s a rare honor to attend a school like Princeton, and much of the credit for that goes to the people who are sitting at our Thanksgiving tables.

Brian Lipshutz is a politics major from Lafayette Hill, Pa. He can be reached at lipshutz@princeton.edu.

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