Thanksgiving is a special time in America, and certainly for my family. Celebrating a truly American holiday, we gather in our family’s country home in Round Oak, Ga., a place too small to have a post office, not even a store or filling station, but large enough to have two churches and a Woodmen of the World meeting hall.
In some ways, our family’s Thanksgiving is much as it has been for generations. In other ways, it’s better, and not by coincidence.
Our old two-story white frame house with porches around three sides, like a multitude of other country homes, is more than 100 years old now. Over the years, its large airy dining room has seen countless family gatherings, a few wedding receptions, and even a funeral wake or two.
When our clan of 20 or so comes together for Thanksgiving, we feel as though ghosts of the past are looking over our shoulders. Seated at a large dining table and a couple of smaller ones, we thank God for our many blessings, introduce newly arrived family members, celebrate the lives of some who have passed on, and remember Thanksgivings past, when folks enjoyed much the same feast prepared this year, one always accompanied by the special aroma from the kitchen that favors us when the food is cooking.
Unlike the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors who gathered for that first Thanksgiving, we in my family are far from being self-sufficient. But relative to those distant cousins, we are prospering. Maybe one or two of us could grow tomatoes, onions, and corn, and at least one family member is capable of bringing home a wild turkey, dressing and cooking it.
But for the most part, we enjoy the relative luxury that comes with specialization and division of labor. We can’t grow it, but we surely can buy it, cook it, and enjoy it.
I am overwhelmed with wonder when I think about the many hands that help provide our Thanksgiving feast. Our turkey comes from North Carolina, and the sweet potatoes in the soufflé are grown in south Georgia. We enjoy tea from the Middle East, butter from Wisconsin, mixed salad with lettuce from California, and a very tempting, homemade cranberry sauce with berries from Canada. The ground peppercorn we use for spice comes from China. The cinnamon in a casserole is from Maryland, the French fried onions are from the Netherlands, and the end-of-meal coffee comes from Central America.
That we can enjoy such an affordable feast, produced by so many people from so many places, in a place without even a post office, is nothing short of miraculous. In cities nearby, we have large retail stores chock full of things from the world’s four corners. Walmart, Publix, Aldi, and Ingles did their part.
Often I sit back in amazement and remember Adam Smith’s explanation of how this miracle happens not just on Thanksgiving, but every single day:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Smith’s paradox holds true. In our effort to improve our own wellbeing, in a market economy, we must think first of others and how to improve their wellbeing. The invisible hand helps fill our plates, our stomachs, and our hearts on this wonderful Thanksgiving Day.
We have much to celebrate.
Bruce Yandle is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business & Behavioral Science. He developed the “Bootleggers and Baptists” political model.
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