Good morning, my dear family and most cherished friends,

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The holidays, which to many appear as a season of unshadowed merriment and glowing hearths, have ever possessed for some a more solemn and piercing character. Beneath the cheerful garlands and the bright exchange of greetings there often lie recollections—old and unwelcome guests—that enter unbidden, take their accustomed seats by the fire, and whisper of former times not altogether sweet. Thus it is that what should be a festival of warmth may, for certain tender hearts, become an anniversary of loss.

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Yet I am persuaded—indeed, I hold it as firmly as any truth learned through the passage of years—that sorrowful memories are not immortal tyrants. They fade, as even the sternest winter must yield to spring. Time, that patient sculptor of the human spirit, wears down the sharpest edges of remembrance. And what time performs slowly, we ourselves may assist with gentle industry.

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For it is within our power to plant new recollections in the soil of the present—bright, living memories that shall in due course outnumber and outshine the dim phantoms of former grief. A happy deed, though small in appearance, possesses a singular strength. It lingers. It returns to warm us. It grows. And as these fresh consolations multiply, the older sorrows retreat, visited less frequently, regarded less tenderly, until they assume their proper scale in the vast ledger of a life.

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How, then, shall we undertake this quiet labor of renewal? Not with grand displays, nor with costly exhibitions, but with those modest acts of kindness which, like unnoticed candles, dispel surprising darkness.

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One might surrender a coveted parking place in a crowded thoroughfare to a stranger whose countenance betrays weariness. One might stoop to gather a stray scrap of litter, sparing another the bend of back and burden of spirit. One might leave behind a small bounty—empty bottles in a return station, a few coins in a corner of the pavement—so that some unsuspecting soul may encounter an unearned delight. A dollar slipped, unseen, into the open fold of a laborer’s coat; a call placed to a lonely resident of a nursing home, who waits in patient silence for a voice to break the day—these, too, are acts of quiet charity.

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The catalogue of such opportunities is without end. Indeed, every crowded shop, every winter pavement, every line of waiting customers presents occasions for goodness, if only we will observe them.

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Now—before the season descends in full procession—is the proper hour for those who find the holidays heavy with remembrance to begin the work of re-creation. Let families join hands in this enterprise. Let them conspire, not in mischief, but in mercy. For each newly minted moment of generosity becomes a lantern in the memory, and in years hence, when the bells ring and the lights are kindled once more, it will be these lanterns—bright, recent, and kindly—that shine most clearly.

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Thus may the old sorrows be softened, not by forgetting, but by being gently outnumbered. And thus may the season, once feared, become again what it was ever meant to be: a time of light prevailing over shadow.

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There are passages in every life which, though framed by modest walls and furnished with no more than necessity demands, shine in memory with a brilliance that might put palaces to shame. Such, to my mind, were the Thanksgivings of the 1950s in our beloved town of Cheshire—days humble in circumstance yet magnificent in feeling.

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When first we removed from Waterbury to Cheshire in the year 1948, we carried with us little in the way of riches, yet much in the way of resolve. After my father was taken from us in 1957, my mother—left with four spirited children between the ages of six and thirteen—became at once the captain and the compass of our small domestic vessel. We lived upon the corner of West Main and Grove Streets, a place which to the wider world may have seemed unremarkable, but which to us was the very navel of existence.

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Diagonally across West Main stood a sturdy building of practical virtue: on one side the West Cheshire Post Office, dispensing letters and news of distant lives; on the other, Cruess’s Grocery Store, from which flowed nearly every comfort our table could claim. Many a coin, carefully counted, crossed that counter; and many a meal owed its substance to that establishment.

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Thanksgiving Day itself unfolded according to a ritual both solemn and joyous. My brother Neil and I would attend the Cheshire High School football game, joining our neighbors in spirited cheer beneath a sky sharpened by late-autumn chill. The air would nip at our ears and redden our hands, so that by the time the final whistle sounded, we were thoroughly prepared—by cold and excitement alike—for the feast awaiting us at home.

And what a feast it was!

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My mother, whose devotion no hardship could weary, would present a turkey of admirable stature, roasted to such a golden hue that it seemed to carry within it the very light of the season. Around it gathered the faithful companions of the holiday table: gravy, dark and savory, flowing like a benevolent river over generous mounds of mashed potatoes; turnips, tender and glossed with butter; and cranberry sauce, whose bright sharpness lent a lively contrast to the richness of the fare.

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The stuffing, that noble invention of thrift and imagination, was prepared from slices of Wonder Bread, broken by hand into hopeful fragments, mingled with seasoning and an ample measure of Land O’Lakes butter. This fragrant mixture was then tucked carefully within the turkey’s hollow, there to cook and transform—thus earning, by honest process, its name and distinction.

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Before the principal meal—whether on Thanksgiving or at Christmastide—there appeared a plate of simple yet eagerly anticipated preliminaries: celery stalks neatly filled with cream cheese, accompanied by a regiment of pickles and olives, whose briny boldness awakened both appetite and conversation.

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And then, as though determined to crown abundance with indulgence, there were the pies—Table Talk pumpkin, smooth and amber as a harvest sunset; mincemeat, deep and mysterious with spice; and apple, fragrant enough to persuade one that Providence had taken a particular interest in orchards and ovens alike.

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We had more than sufficient; indeed, more than prudence might require. Yet there was always space at our table for an extra chair and an extra plate. In our home, hospitality was not reckoned in dollars but in warmth. None departed hungry, and none—so far as I could observe—departed without some measure of affection carried quietly away with them.

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Thus it is that I remember those Thanksgivings: not solely for their splendid dishes, though splendid they were, but for the glow that filled our modest house more completely than any fire upon the hearth.

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May you, too, be blessed with such warmth.

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A most Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Kev