WHO WILL GIVE THANKS FOR WATER?

On the last day of November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day. By tradition, the first Thanksgiving is said to have occurred in November, 1621 when Pilgrim colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts held a harvest feast, a festival lasting three days. It is said that the meal included lobster, seals and swans. Governor Bradford invited friendly Wampanoag Indians, including Chief Massasoit who added five deer to the menu. Pumpkin pie was not baked, as there were no ovens.

The Pilgrims certainly had much to be thankful for--not the least of which was survival. Only about one-half of those arriving on the Mayflower in 1620 had survived the winter. In addition, they were thankful for the Indians who had taught them how to grow corn, harvest maple sap, catch fish and avoid poisonous plants.

In 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed an annual Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday in November. More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that Thanksgiving Day is constitutional. It said: "Our history is replete with official references to the value and invocation of Devine guidance in deliberations and pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and contemporary leaders. Beginning in the early colonial period long before Independence, a day of Thanksgiving was celebrated as a religious holiday to give thanks for the bounties of Nature as gifts from God. President Washington and his successors proclaimed Thanksgiving, with all its religious overtones, as day of national celebration and Congress made it a National Holiday more than a century ago. Ch.167, 16 STAT. 168 (1870). That holiday has not lost its theme of expressing thanks for Devine aid any more than has Christmas lost its religious significance."*

Now, in 2013, almost 300 years after the Pilgrims launched their first Thanksgiving feast, the Day means sacrificial turkey, potatoes of some sort, squash, cranberries, pumpkin pie and other treats. It also means falling asleep before a television set blaring boring football games as an escape from listening to boring relatives. It also means running to all the stores that open even before all the football games are over to buy things on sale that no one needs or wants. In effect, the so-called Black Friday becomes a Black Thursday all-nighter.

But,there's more! Even though thanks may be uttered for the turkey, the trimmings, the football, the sleep, the open stores and their sales--oh yes, even the boring relatives--it is likely that no one will give thanks for the most important thing that day. Who will give thanks for water?

Without water, there would be no turkey, no trimmings, no football, no television, no stores, and no boring relatives. Indeed, for example, it has been reported that, according to a U.S. Geological Survey, it takes an average of 39,000 gallons of water to make a car to get to stores, and it takes 1,440 gallons of water to produce a dozen of eggs that might be used for the meal. And, of course, without water, there would be no one to give thanks for anything.

So, this Thanksgiving Day, maybe we should start giving thanks for water and acknowledging our responsibility to conserve and protect it.

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* Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), p. 675