“I don’t mean to listen in
But the shoutin’ is so loud
I turn up the radio to drown it out
And silently I say a little prayer”
“But for the Grace of God” - Keith Urban

Part of his self-titled debut studio album, “But for the Grace of God” was the first number-one song for Keith Urban in his career. Originally co-written by Urban and former members of The Go-Gos, Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, in 1998, the song was recorded in 1999 and finally hit airwaves in November 2000, reaching the top spot of the Billboard Hot Country charts on Feb. 24, 2001.

Urban’s career exploded from that initial album, released nine years after a self-titled EP dropped in Australia to launch his career.
The New Zealand-born singer has won 13 Country Music Association Awards, four Grammy Awards, 16 Academy of Country Music Awards, and “But for the Grace of God” was the first of 18 No. 1 songs for him.

In the lyrics, Urban observes folks struggling in life, from sparring neighbors in a relationship quarrel to an old man who has plenty of money and things but is visibly lonely. He counters those observations with the happiness he feels due to the love of his partner.

Being thankful for the gifts we have in life is a very common theme this time of year as we head toward Thanksgiving, but already, after a contentious election season that really peaked an ever-dividing American social media culture, stories are emerging from social media to broadcast media, and even on traditional news media, about families who are splitting up their holiday, in large part due to politics and division.

The common thread on these posts and these stories is that we’ve gotten so polarized that even a holiday like Thanksgiving has become a political football.

Except that the nation’s history says that Thanksgiving always has been a divisive topic…

Consider that the wonderful “Pilgrims and Indians” story you learned once upon a time in school isn’t the reality of the first day of thanks on this continent, and the story itself was largely a compilation of a half-dozen celebration meals that the Pilgrims and Indigenous people who had already occupied the land shared together over a decade-long time frame in the 1600s.

Also consider that those meals were by no means the first day of thanks celebrations on the continent. Heck, thankfulness celebrations predated European settlers completely as many Indigenous tribes celebrated together and thanked the Creator for a bountiful harvest.

Europeans held harvest-season “day of thanks” celebrations before they ever came to the North American continent, and nearly every exploration group (English, French, Spanish, etc.) held a day of thanks celebration upon safe arrival in the New World.

President John F. Kennedy issued a proclamation in 1963 recognizing the claims of both Virginia and Massachusetts holding the first Thanksgiving Day as being equally valid claims.

The Pilgrim story of the first Thanksgiving truly gained steam after Reconstruction, and many felt that the way the story was told at the time was spun in a way to justify actions such as the Wounded Knee Massacre by claiming that the Indigenous people of the land, once considered friends to settlers, were “now” striking out against those same settlers as they attempted to move further West.

Thanksgiving was not a consistent thing in the country for the first 160 years of the country, either, as some years there would be no Presidential proclamation to declare a day of thanks as a nation, and then once Congress declared a national holiday for Thanksgiving after the Civil War, they did not specify a particular day of the year to have it, leading to Thanksgiving held from early November to Christmas Eve in the first century and a half of the country.

That’s when the holiday really became a political football. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 broke with tradition at the time, of having Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month of November, something that had been typical since Abraham Lincoln was in office, though also not consistent.

Lincoln’s efforts to have a “usual” day was even divisive, inspired by a letter from Sarah Josepha Hale, encouraging a single, joint Thanksgiving Day across the United States after the Civil War, and that idea went over like nails on a chalkboard in the South.

Because there were five Thursdays in November that year and the last Thursday would have been Nov. 30. Roosevelt declared that the fourth Thursday of November 1939 would be Thanksgiving Day. Interestingly, Fred Lazarus, Jr., founder of the department store that would eventually rename itself to Macy’s, strongly encouraged Roosevelt in the move with the intent of helping American businesses, barely coming out of the Great Depression, to have more shopping days before Christmas to advertise to potential shoppers.

Most of us know Macy’s on Thanksgiving for another tradition - the parade!

In Dec. 1941, less than a month after Pearl Harbor, Congress passed a joint resolution that Thanksgiving Day would be observed on the fourth Thursday of November every year going forward. Roosevelt signed the bill, making Thanksgiving observance a federal law.

The change had many up in arms. A pair of South Dakota high school students from Groton borrowed the letterhead of a local insurance agency and sent a letter to Roosevelt that is still part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. The letter lambasted the president, comparing him to Hitler for having the audacity to move the observance day.

Within a decade of the change, the term “Black Friday” became a common phrase used to describe big sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas shopping season, and Black Friday sales annually became the point where many retail businesses find their way into the black for the year before, hopefully, finishing the year with a strong month of December to keep the business afloat.

So, when a family member or friend laments the way that politics has messed up their Thanksgiving, remind them that facts around the holiday have always been divisive.

I mean, people still believe against scientific evidence that it’s the turkey that makes you tired as you watch football all afternoon - not the six varieties of starch and the highly-sugared desserts that you consume alongside the turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving.