A Time to Give Thanks

One hundred years ago, Harvard students had much for which to be thankful. Harvard had defeated Yale 17-0 and in the victory party that ensued President Eliot made a stirring speech to students crowded around a roaring bonfire. Students today may be wishing they could transport themselves back to such joyful times. Over the long years since then, Thanksgiving has had a rocky history at Harvard.

For instance, Thanksgiving was a grim affair in the fall of 1962. On Nov. 20 of that year we bemoaned the divisive nature of the Harvard dining halls calling them, "as complicated and mutually restrictive as the customs system of the German states before the Zollverein." Almost 40 years later, Harvard students may still empathize with that sentiment.

Only seven years later, in 1969, Thanksgiving apparently failed to occur at all at Harvard, students being too busy protesting by occupying the dean's office to notice the passing of the nation's most popular holiday.

This year, the few, the proud and the far-from home will be dining together in the culinary capitol that is Quincy House. The rest of the Harvard community, per a long tradition, will be flying, or driving (and for some locals, walking) back home for the long weekend.

So, it will no doubt be a slightly lonely time for those not taking the Undergraduate Council shuttles to the airport Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. It is obvious that few students plan on taking only the officially recognized holiday weekend, as most prefer to augment it with voluntary vacation, either arriving later next week or having left earlier this week. Since so many students seem willing to make the sacrifice of turning in problem sets and completing response papers ahead of schedule in order to join their families on Thanksgiving, it is time that the University affords them the time to do so.

Gone are the days when most students, as they did in 1944, could make the quick trip to New York or "wangle dinner invitations from friends of the family in the nearby villages." Harvard students today hale from such far-off ports as San Francisco, Anchorage and Honolulu. Should not they, too, be able to have the time to visit their friends and family on Thanksgiving? Surely, the University is not so stingy as to begrudge them the time to clasp their hands over a hearty meal with loved ones, and with airline tickets none-too-cheap, the University should recognize that those who do leave will want to take the full benefit of their fares.

After all, Thanksgiving is one of the few secular holidays that all Americans can share. The real history of Thanksgiving may differ from what we learned in fourth grade as we cut out construction paper Turkeys and learned about Squanto and the Pilgrims, but this is beside the point. The spirit of Thanksgiving is now embedded in our national consciousness as firmly as is the Fourth of July. It is a time for togetherness, for family and above all, for thankfulness, for our friends, our family and our food.

We may not be in as thankful a mood as we were 100 years ago--indeed some of us will be shedding a few tears into our gravy for those last 29 seconds in New Haven--but there is still much to rejoice in our individual lives. If the University would give us the full week of vacation to enjoy as our rivals do, we would have one more thing for which to be thankful.