From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031@aol.com>
To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago <mark_rabago@saipantribune.com>; editor <editor@saipantribune.com>
Sent: Tue, Nov 20, 2012 8:48 pm
Subject: For Thursday
T-Day
Three perspectives underlie the structure of Christian thought
in the last two millennia. The most
familiar one is transcendence where paradise in the metaphor of heaven is
located elsewhere than where we currently are.
Then there is earthly immanence, the transformation that occurs when one
unconditionally embraces the fullness of life in the here-and-now. The third is the spirit of freedom,
transparent exercise of responsibility in the realm of finite historical
choices.
In ritual, these perspectives were intoned in the medieval
formula of naming realities, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost!" In current parlance,
that would be rehearsing the role of the Terminator, the Transformer, and the
Turkey!
Human civilization ritualize certain events like the
culmination of a harvest, the completion of a monumental task, or just the
satisfaction over the passing of a crisis.
Gratitude is a garden variety of human virtue. It joins other modes of affirmed consciousness
in the practices of personal confession, societal petition, and relational
intercession, long observed in prayerful communities.
We tarry along the religious path of this national holiday
because most Americans gather around family tables this day in the mythology of
the first perspective. In such spirit
began the annual celebration after Abraham Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed a
national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who
dwelleth in Heaven".
Brownscombe 1914 painting of Plymouth settlers feasting
with natives has become a familiar visual to accounts. Historians tell of 53 Plymouth settlers and
90 Indians holding a three-day feast after the settlers survived their first
year of harsh winter. (Revisionists
point out that narratives, at least, need to acknowledge how the native residents
were later turned into targets on T-day's turkey shoots!)
FDR nailed the date down to the fourth Thursday of
November, to settle the uncertainty of day on those years when there are five
Thursdays in November. Not all States
complied. It became a joke that when
there were five Thursday, observance on the fourth made it Democratic while on
the fifth, Republican.
The celebration has commercially evolved into a season of
shopping, marked by Macy's Parade, merrily rolls down the store aisles until way
past New Year, with the apex reached with Santa's gifts under the Tannenbaum bought
and wrapped before Christmas eve. The
intrusion of the dollar into the equation watered down the religious emphasis
specifically made Christian in the presidential proclamations of Presbyterian
pastor's son Grover Cleveland and staunch Methodist William McKinley.
Gerald Ford made the day totally secular skewing previous
references to providence in his proclamation. The media was not pleased. Ford lost the next election. Ronald Reagan chuckled the
"pardoning" of the proffered turkey, and George H. W. Bush made the
practice a permanent fixture in the annual presidential ritual. Bill Clinton emphasized gratitude to those
who serve to promote the American vision and implement its mission. George W. Bush took the task of international
peace into the war room on terror after 9/11.
Obama was criticized for not thanking "God" in his
proclamation of 2011. American sentiment
shifted. Obama got reelected.
Along with many College and Professional Sports' events,
Holiday movies get a Thanksgiving premiere to test their weight in the box
office. The pumpkin pie remains a dinner
staple but the contest is in the field on the biggest and heaviest variety
raised. Meanwhile, the wild turkey joins
the list of the endangered specie. The
t-bird that graces holiday tables lost its thunder and smell, coming from coops
where they are fattened for weight. The
meat hardly emits the familiar fragrant fowl flavor and aroma characteristic of
the wild bird in the prairies now relegated to the trademark of a Bourbon.
Thanksgiving Day in China has all the trappings of
western commercial symbols devoid of historical moorings. In Saipan, we render obeisance to
providential divinity in the cosmic realm.
It is a matter of course but irrelevant.
In my campus building, gratitude is echoed by the Anshallah of Muslims from Africa, the Middle East, South-Southeast
Asia who share my building's morning elevator ride with their gracious salutations
of Salaam Malaikom! Grace drapes the
diversity.
Save for a lone Protestant evangelical, we do not see
much of the transformative messianic impulse, amazingly gracious, or
otherwise. The once 'puritanical' CPC battles
corruption within its ranks, with President Hu Jintao declaring at the recent Party
Congress that if the practice is not curtailed, it will be the death knell of
the Party and the government in the next decade. The hyperbole on service reminiscent of Mao's
vaunted service is met by a skeptical smirk.
The current gap of income distribution is deep and wide. That's all that seem to matter in a newly
affluent and resurgent China.
The Terminator remained with Ahnold in California. The Transformer is still a toy but got
animated in the fight between the autobots and the decepticons. As for my gobble gobble, I will stick with the
turkey!
Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!