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In lieu of a true Thanksgiving song, sing this little ditty with me

By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency on

Some papers carrying my column publish on Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), so for them and also for my own deep love of the only truly universal spiritual American holiday, I am including another Thanksgiving column this week. For those readers who get my column after the holiday, you can pack it up and read it next year. Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Leftovers, whichever applies. God bless!

Q: As Thanksgiving approaches, I would like first to thank you for many years of enlightened and enlightening conversations with your readers. However, I do have to contest a statement you made in a previous Thanksgiving column. You stated that there are no Thanksgiving songs. Have you never heard, "Over the River and Through the Woods" or "Come ye Thankful People?" There may be others as well. You can even walk past the house near Boston that inspired the former, where presumably, the dapple grey "sprang over the ground like a hunting hound, for today is Thanksgiving Day." May God bless you and your family this Thanksgiving, and I give thanks for your wonderful column. --B

A: Thank you, dear B, for your very kind words that tempt me to agree with you, but I am sticking to my view that there are really no Thanksgiving songs.

A cursory search for Thanksgiving songs in the great and wonderful Oz Internet came up with clinkers like, "Food, Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver that is not a Thanksgiving song and requires 20 Broadway urchins to sing it properly at your Thanksgiving table. Some lists of Thanksgiving songs include Bing Crosby's "Count your Blessings" from the Irving Berlin Musical White Christmas that is, firstly, about Christmas -- not Thanksgiving -- and secondly, is not nearly as good as "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas." Even Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving song got some internet votes, but when you are forced to include songs from Saturday Night Live in your Thanksgiving repertoire of all-time favorites you know you are stretching a bit too far. Some lists of Thanksgiving songs include "What a wonderful world" by Louis Armstrong which is a great song that always makes me cry but it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving and cannot be sung by any person other than the great Satchmo.

So let us move on to the only real candidates that might possibly qualify as Thanksgiving songs.

"Over the River and Through the Woods" was indeed written as a Thanksgiving song in 1844 by Lydia Maria Child but it became famous when it was rewritten as a Christmas song and sung by, among others, by Danny Kaye and the Andrews sisters.

 

"We Gather Together" is a great song but it is actually a Dutch hymn that had nothing to do with Thanksgiving and in fact did not make it to America until 1903!

"Come Ye Thankful People Come" is a close call. Written by an English cleric, Rev Henry Alford in 1844, it is however about harvest time in England, not Thanksgiving Day in America. And the last two verses are problematic theologically. They are based on the very un-ecumenical New Testament Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13: 24-30) "giving angels charge at last, in the fire the tares to cast; but the fruitful ears to store in the garner evermore." I am just not sure Alford believed that Jews qualified as "fruitful ears." In fact I am sure he didn't.

Perhaps we can compromise on, "Bless this House" which was written in 1927 by the Englishwoman Helen Taylor and May Brahe. Although it also has nothing whatever to do with Thanksgiving, I love the song and the simple praise and gratitude it offers for home and hearth echoes the deepest reasons why we all love Thanksgiving.

So dear readers, please put down your green bean casseroles and sing with me now:

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