Thanksgiving has been a national holiday since 1863, when Abraham Lincoln made the traditional celebration official. And although it's the favorite holiday of many Americans for its being the most prominent non-religious calendar date, its meaning to the population has evolved over the decades. For millions nation-wide now it certainly means a day off and/or a great day for watching television and/or a smart time to see a movie. (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is the amazing Thanksgiving release this year, having topped the $100,000 mark in a matter of days, if not minutes.)

For possibly millions of others, and not happily, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the year-end holidays and therefore the time when dysfunctional families manifest their most acute dysfunctions. Indeed, Jonathan Franzen's novel, The Corrections, which has just won the National Book Award despite his having made a fool of himself repudiating Oprah Winfrey's tapping him for her book club, is about a mother's attempts to bring her warring family together for a conciliatory Thanksgiving dinner.

This year, however, Thanksgiving may have regained its original meaning in the heads and hearts of more Americans than it has since who-knows-when. The reason, of course, is tied to the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. My guess is that from coast to coast Thanksgiving dinners were distinguished by discussions of the event and how much we have to be thankful for despite what occurred. Even in families, where the losses of life were immediate, it appears as if widows and widowers as well as now fatherless or motherless children felt gratitude for having had what time they did have with their lost members.

I spent my Thanksgiving in Pleasantville, New York, with a cousin and his family and one other friend of his, who, I was told, had nowhere else to go. While we were having the typical turkey with the usual trimmings, my cousin talked about what is going on in his office. He's a lawyer with a firm that happens to overlook Ground Zero, that patch of marred land where the Twin Towers once stood. He said that post-traumatic stress is still evident all around him at work. Among other disturbing anecdotes, he mentioned that his secretary remains weepy and on-edge. When American Airlines flight 587 crashed last week in Queens, his secretary announced that she was going home immediately. My cousin simply said, "Okay."

Incidentally, to get to Pleasantville, I had to take a commuter train. So I passed through Grand Central Station, where the lines were long and everyone was unusually patient. We were guided into line by a National Guard who was talking to colleagues on an intercom. I have to say that after being in that mighty building for about a quarter of an hour, my first Thanksgiving observation was that no one bothers to dress up for holidays anymore. Yes, travel isn't the best way to treat a person's Sunday-best clothes, but there was a time when that was a secondary concern. Now the day's dress-code is apparently jeans, sweat shirts and running shoes. Of the hundreds people I walked by or who walked by me, I saw one man, and just one, wearing a tie and a tweed jacket.

It was only after I commented on this to myself that it occurred to me Grand Central Station on Thanksgiving might be an ideal spot for a terrorist to go to work. I gave this grim rumination about five seconds worth of thought and then let it go. Maybe this sense of well-being, which hasn't been a daily commodity for over two months now, is what I was most thankful for on this first post-9/11 Thanksgiving.

Also by David Finkle:
COFFEE-HOUSE BLUES
THE ZEN OF JAY-WALKING
CHANGING PLACES
DARKNESS AT NOON
UNION SQUARE
MAKING IT REAL
WAKE UP CHILLUN
FLYING THE FLAG