THE BELL CURVE -- joseph n. bell

While you’re having a second helping of turkey this afternoon, you might

reflect briefly on the roots of this celebration as gratitude for a

bountiful harvest.

But it’s extremely doubtful that you’ll remember -- if, indeed, you ever

knew -- that it came into official being more than a century later

because of a military victory. Since then, Thanksgiving has evolved into

an opportunity to review our blessings, eat excessively, and ponder the

beginnings of winter and the increasingly frenetic run to Christmas.

We’re hosting a large, extended family Thanksgiving dinner today. And

this, it seems to me, is the ultimate blessing: the privilege of being

surrounded by people you love on a day that celebrates more than anything

else the joys and satisfactions of family.

So for a few hours, I can put aside my perception of the changing role of

Thanksgiving over the seven decades I’ve observed this holiday. Maybe

I’ve lived too long, but Thanksgiving today has become a bookend for six

weeks of inordinate excess. The stores are already decorated, the

Christmas tree lots open, the newspapers stuffed with Christmas ads, an

orgy of spending underway.

I don’t think that’s what the Pilgrims had in mind when they gathered to

give thanks for a rich planting season that would keep body and soul

together over a rugged winter for this hardy band of immigrants. Nor was

it what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he proclaimed Thanksgiving a

national holiday a few days after the carnage at the battle of

Gettysburg.

In issuing that proclamation, Lincoln said: “I invite the people of the

United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of

worship, and, in the forms approved by their own consciences ... invoke

the influences of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced

and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.”

So the stress of facing starvation by the Pilgrims and resolving a

bloody, fratricidal war by Lincoln that created Thanksgiving and made it

a national holiday has now been replaced by the stress of fighting crowds

in vast shopping malls for gifts we often don’t need and getting

Christmas cards off in time. Plus another stress that is perhaps the

greatest of all: high expectations.

We set ourselves up for disappointment with the unreal expectations

almost demanded of us by the Thanksgiving to Christmas holidays. And

we’ll do it again next year. And the year after that. Part of the reason,

of course, is the changing nature of the family. When I was growing up,

the nuclear family -- good, bad, or indifferent -- was at least intact.

Now, it’s often splintered, with multiple households competing to share

loved ones and the accompanying poignance of who isn’t there when we sit

down to dinner.

Maybe this is one of the lessons Thanksgiving can teach us today as a

kind of warmup to Christmas: that there is a good and proper time for

letting go of some of our own needs and expectations. Learning to do that

in good grace is both a cause for giving thanks and a sure relief from

the stress that so often builds over the holidays. And in our household,

we’ll have an immediate opportunity to put this into practice because my

stepson won’t be with us on either Thanksgiving or Christmas.

This year, of course, is unique in another respect. All the normal stress

and high expectations of the holiday season will be compounded several

times over by the upcoming millennium. Already the pressure to make this

into a memorable, unforgettable occasion is building expectations to a

level I suspect none of us are going to reach. Or even want to by the

time it actually takes place.

Personally, I just want to get it over with. My fantasies right now are

not of Times Square at midnight or watching the natives of Tanzania bring

in the millennium. My fantasies all have to do with sitting in our TV

room with my feet on a stool and a beer in hand, watching the Rose Bowl

game and wallowing in the knowledge that this is all behind me for

another thousand years.

Of course I’m being told that my TV might not work, the Rose Bowl may

disappear into the 19th century and there may not be any electric power.

But I’m ready to take my chances. If I’ve navigated successfully through

the next six weeks, a simple power failure should be a piece of cake.

I’ll probably still pay too much for a Christmas tree, do my shopping on

the 24th, and get my cards out in February. But I can also hope that on

this Thanksgiving I can be at peace with myself, with the season, and

with those who are here as well as those who are not. That, along with

the blessings of life and health, seems like plenty to be thankful for.

Even though I don’t like turkey very much.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a Santa Ana Heights resident. His column runs

Thursdays.