elegantly dressed turkey

Maybe elegantly isn't really the word: look at that celery! But this picture is a masterful piece of propaganda, in the most favourable sense of that word. Everyone looks so rosy, and the table is so crisp, it stops questions at your eyes, long before they reach the brain.

For one thing, why does that poor old woman not even get to wear her nice clothes, like everybody else? It'll be because she went, "Oh, pshaw! What, and do all that cooking? Don't worry about that, dear! My blue sprigged is fine."

I heard once that Norman Rockwell, the artist (of course) originally gave the adults around the table a glass of wine with their dinner but that the Saturday Evening Post - whose cover this was for - refused it, on the grounds that it wouldn't go down well in the Midwest; so in the end Grandma has to make do with her blue cotton dress and a glass of WATER.

By shrinking the field of vision the way he has, Rockwell says: don't look around at the world, don't look at anybody else's celebration, don't look outside this room: don't look away from this table! The field is so narrow even the participants have to crowd eagerly forward just to get into it, and the viewer never even notices what isn't in the picture. (It is a beautiful composition, don't you think so?)

In short, this is a magnificently elegant paean to health, plenty (but not excess), making do, uncomplicated happiness, family, wholesomeness, prosperity, bouffant hairstyles, starched white tablecloths and all the rest of it. This was published in November 1943. It says that everything the Pilgrims came for was right, that the American way of life is worth fighting for, and that peace will prevail.

Just for tomorrow, let's believe in it.

Happy Thanksgiving!