Non-circulating advice on avoiding hell

Yale boasts one of the best academic library systems in the country--but its Thanksgiving resources fall woefully short. An Orbis search turns up several thousand Thanksgiving-related entries, but very little in the way of practical advice. The keywords "dysfunctional family" only produce three items, and "family strife" only leads to Family Strife in Hapsburg by the aptly named Franz Grillparzer.

Except for Cartoonists' Thanksgiving Project (with a foreword by Kenny Rogers!) Orbis's Thanksgiving-linked texts are mostly doomsday sermons on microform. Thanksgiving was once an occasion for reminding parishioners of Hell's pull, it seems--too much turkey and football evidently engender moral decay. Even Yalie Jonathan Edwards, class of 1703, got into the act with the frighteningly-titled "The Fatall Feasts, or God's Finger Upon the Wall, Appearing at the Great Thanksgiving Festival (Upon Cain's Slaughter of His Brother Abel)." He is outdone only by his preaching comrade Charles Nicholets's "The Cabinet of Hell Unlocked, or The Late Grand Conspiracy Emblazon'd--a Sermon Preached on Thanksgiving." Curiously, Nicholets delivered his sermon in 1696, long before Ben Franklin made a case for the turkey as national bird. But who's counting?

Beinecke, despite its wealth, doesn't have much to offer in the way of Thanksgiving advice either. Its sole resource: an ad for a Thanksgiving sale that was held on Sat., Nov. 18, 1920, by the McCall Company in Norman, Oklahoma. This priceless piece of cultural treasure is housed among the "Broadsides," with the following description: "1 sheet, 56 by 38 cm." Don't miss it.

The Divinity School library, however, is a little more up to speed. They've got "A Thanksgiving Scroll: a Scroll From the Wilderness of Judaea." That Judaean wilderness has pilgrims, too, although not much in the way of honey-baked ham.

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