Opinion
Thankfully striving for freedom
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday and time of remembrance, an occasion for family and friends, grandparents and children, comfortable aromas of hearty foods that draw us to the table for sharing. All in all, Thanksgiving Day is a notably American tradition.
This year, as I think about Thanksgiving 2009, I recall the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting from 1943, titled “Freedom from Want.” Apparently it sent the message during World War II that Americans had enough, even if not too much, to say grace over on the home front. The magazine cover it produced hit the stands at a time of high patriotism and pride in the nation, and the artwork visually showed one of the Four Freedoms championed by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Rockwell’s painting is now 66 years old. Whether it depicts 2009 life, or is mostly irrelevant in the modern age, is why I wish to re-examine the painting. When I glance head-on at the work from the dining room table end, I see grandpa and grandma delivering a huge dinner bird. Grandma is wearing a smock and full-front apron, as my own grandma did in the 1950s, and looks matronly of figure. Grandpa has a suit and tie, with the suit coat obviously buttoned, as he prepares to carve the Tom. The clothing so described is vintage ’43, but not so cool in 2009. Still, the grandparents in the piece could exist naturally in either decade.
Then I’m drawn to the other people gathered at table. I find eight in all, from very young to older, and a total of 10 counting the hosts already described. The number 10 at one Thanksgiving meal, if all family members, may be unusually large in 2009, but surely possible. Most unlikely, though, is that all the faces that can be seen are smiling congenially, which may show that Rockwell’s family had no jealousies, resentments or petty arguments — true in almost every family I know.
Other oddities stand out, too. All the glasses on the table, although filled with liquid, have no Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, or the like, even for the youngsters. More unsettling yet, no one has a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone, pocket computer, electronic game or anything else in hand to communicate with outsiders to the festivities. But, then I’m shocked back to the reality that I’m looking at 1943 in a time warp and not my own or my neighbor’s dining room table.
The one timeless thing that has pretty much remained as it was then is that, like FDR, we all want freedom from want in America and for the whole world. Many have it, too many here and abroad don’t, and that’s an inescapable fact. We have come so far from 1943 in many ways, but we still seek that fundamental freedom. On this Nov. 26, thankfully we are striving for that same laudable goal, and we might actually see it come true some day.
DON WIECHMANN is an Edmond resident.
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