Nation: A Holiday of Hope

With guarded optimism, the U.S. looks forward on Thanksgiving

It was, as always, a special holiday, with a mood all its own. It had its traditional parades, fiestas on main streets that make children glad adults never grow up; its football classics, often unclassically played; its Butterballs, a word sometimes as aptly applied to the stuffed consumers as it is to the birds. But there were few elaborate dress-up parties and no bulging racks of greeting cards; the occasional pasteboard turkeys that appeared in stores got lost amid the Christmas lights that began winking...