I have always said Thanksgiving as if it were the name of an event, a proper noun. I knew, of course, what the two words that made up the one word meant, but I always just said it with the idea (thanks to FDR) that it was the fourth Thursday in November.

A few years back, I was reading an entry in a blog by a young woman who was from rural Texas. She wrote that people here in the Midwest looked at her strangely when she said Thanksgiving, because she didn’t run it all together but pronounced it as the action the word described: THANKS GIVING. I’ve always remembered that.

We take so much for granted, especially in this country where we pretty much have it everyday. In fact, we hurry it along, so we can get on to the shopping for the next month’s giving which seems to have taken over even the slightest nod to mangers and a star and wise men.