Thank goodness for traditions

If today you are recovering from a turkey-pumpkin-pie-NFL-and-family hangover, then I suspect you might be an American (or closely connected to similar). Yesterday, being the third Thursday in November, has been celebrated by generations of your fellow countrymen almost as vigorously as Christmas is elsewhere.

It’s a time when you and yours – and everyone you know – heads home to be back in the “bosom of your family” (interestingly paediatric metaphor, no?). Or, if you’re starting your own family or making a statement against those old family ties, Thanksgiving is a great time to do so. Nothing says family – in real life USA or in our storytelling in movies and books – like Thanksgiving. Nothing says loneliness or exclusion better than not doing Thanksgiving.

To those who’ve grown up in modern American culture, it’s often taken for granted as “a thing”. It’s an agreed point on the population’s timeline – falling handily between Halloween and “the Holidays” (Christmas to most of the population). Retailers love it because it’s another excuse to drive sales (hence today’s Black Friday deals).

To individuals, then it’s a really useful way to mark the passing of time (and to remind yourself why your siblings or aunties are really so annoying). But more importantly than that, it’s a shared point. It’s a point where people come together again. Sure they give thanks (as the first settlers are supposed to have) but the important bit is that it’s not a time for personal reflection; it’s a time to do so together.

Which is striking for a nation built on the idea of individuals and individual rights

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” Declaration of Independence

For me, it’s one of those examples of there being a gap between on the one hand, the stories we tell ourselves about us, who we are and our place in the world and, on the other hand, the underlying and unchanging nature of human behaviour. And of our amazing ability as interpreters of behaviour to ignore the latter.

Archeologists have a longer timeframe (looking back over many generations) and anthropologists a broader perspective (looking across cultures) to see the underlying truth of it. They will recognise  Thanksgiving as a familiar kind of event – a feast that builds community bonds and reinforces social structures. The literature in both these fields is full of examples of such a thing – both at this time of the year (enjoying the harvest as Autumn or Fall leads into Winter) and at other times. How largesse and indulgence are important social mechanics (from Avebury to the Kula-rings in Oceania). How specific traditions have to be followed. How such feasts create and reinforce social heirarchy and provide the opportunity for the sharing of knowledge, experiences and intergroup connections across an other wise disconnected population. And so on.

Thanksgiving is a “special time” and “very American” but it’s also very, very human. As student of human behaviour we need both the ability to revel in the specific and the ability to see the specific as part of bigger patterns, related to other phenomena – indeed the same kind of thing as things observed elsewhere. The “thing itself” and the “kinda thing”, too.

Cultivating both a knowledge of the specific and the general is key to understanding how people do what they do. And giving yourself a chance at changing what they do.