Leave Thanksgiving Alone!

Several years ago (I don’t remember when, exactly) the mainstream press concluded that Americans no longer possess the social wherewithal to gather unaided for Thanksgiving. According to this new journalistic consensus, which seemed to arise without cause and all at once, the hybrid secular-spiritual national holiday declared by President Lincoln in 1863 had grown too fraught to be left to amateurs, to ordinary people and their families, who now required expert help in the form of countless columns and articles if they were to sit together without incident eating cornbread stuffing and watching football.