“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.
Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words.”
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt
“True, we have had our difficulties . . . but all of these have made
us stronger to do the great tasks which have fallen to us.”
-Paul Labilliere
Dean of Westminster Abbey, 1942
For the first time in American history, our citizens in military uniform serving outside the U.S. in 1942 had to find a way to celebrate Thanksgiving. In England those Americans used the opportunity to introduce the British to our homegrown holiday.
Merchant ships brought tons of frozen turkeys across the dangerous Atlantic for the festivities. The Americans donated all of these to the thousands of British wounded recovering in hospitals. Instead of the traditional turkey dinner, the Americans ate roast pork and had plum pudding for dessert. The Lord Mayor of Boston in Lincolnshire invited 100 servicemen to be his guests for a modest wartime dinner. Afterward, a senior officer laid a wreath on the memorial to five pre-Revolutionary War royal governors who had been born in the historic city.
The most dramatic event was the ceremony that took place in London’s Westminster Abbey. No British government had ever permitted any ritual on its altar except the prescribed services of the Church of England. On November 26, 1942, they made an exception. Even though the event had only been announced in a small newspaper ad, the Abbey was quickly filled with more than 3,000 uniformed men and women. One reporter described the tomb of Britains’ unknown soldier of World War I as being surrounded by a “hedge of khaki.” Corporal Heinz Arnold of New York state played “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the coronation organ.
As you celebrate your Thanksgiving today think of the value and the power of your gratitude and your passion for helping others. Think about ways of sharing your day with others who might not be with friends and family and might not even understand Thanksgiving at all. Our holidays are wonderful opportunities to “include people in,” to build on Samuel Goldwyn’s famous quotation. It’s a great chance to show who we are as Americans to the rest of the world and thereby to build deeper, healthier bonds of friendship and understanding at the human level that mere political diplomacy between countries can’t do. Happy Thanksgiving!
Thomas Fleming, former president of the Society of American Historians, recounts these events and others in his new book “An American Feast: Six Memorable Thanskgivings.”
